Review: Tetro

Alden Ehrenreich, Vincet Gallo, Maribel Verdu, Rodrigo de La Serna, Klaus-Maria Brandauer, Carmen Maura, Leticia Bredice. Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. American Zoetrope. Not Rated.
127 minutes.

* * * ½ stars

Tetro, Francis Ford Coppola’s first original screenplay since 1974’s The Conversation, is an evocative, semi-autobiographical meditation on the birth of an artist and the secrets that run deep in the blood of family. After last year’s impenetrable Youth Without Youth, this sumptuous new film finds Coppola back on solid ground and signals the arrival of a major young actor who easily carries the picture.

Waiting tables on a cruise ship docked in Buenos Aires, 17-year-old American Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich) struggles with identity after being abandoned by older brother Tetro (Vincent Gallo) years prior, and whose mother has spent nearly a decade in a coma. He pays a visit to the reclusive, ex-pat sibling in search of answers.

Fleeing from unresolved past traumas and a shell of the promising writer he once was, Tetro now lives with his long-suffering Argentine lover, Miranda (Maribel Verdu), his former doctor who is now a dancer. He’s divorced himself from his former life, including world-famous father Carlo (Klaus-Maria Brandauer), an internationally renowned symphony conductor, womanizer and betrayer.

They reside above a nightclub run by Jose (Rodrigo de La Serna), the proprietor of flamboyant theatricals where Tetro now remains in the shadows, operating lights for a burlesque version of Faust, one of Coppola’s grand, sexy showpieces. Periodically, Tetro is Fellini-esque in its unabashed reverence to the carnal female mystique, an erotic playfulness present mostly in the film’s latter passages.

Like his older brother before him, idealistic Bennie aspires to write plays, and after secretly coveting Tetro’s unfinished, autobiographical manuscripts, experiences an artistic awakening while working to decipher the missing pieces of his childhood.

Tensions between the trio erupt in an expertly performed, three-way confrontation set in a hospital room, featuring some of the very best acting in a movie this year. Both Gallo and Verdu are convincing as a couple locked in the past and stunted in the present. Verdu, in particular, enlivens the film with palpable maternal warmth.

Gradually Bennie learns about Tetro’s past while dramatizing the secret journals, and is quickly heralded as the family’s newest artiste by South America’s most influential theater critic, “Alone” (Carmen Maura). Soon the troupe of actors, brothers and lovers are en route to the Patagonian Festival, in a visually dazzling sequence. During this passage, spectacular compositions set against snowy mountains sparkle with a luminescence that reminds you how absent filmmakers of Coppola’s caliber have become in today’s mainstream cinema.

But ultimately, the chief pleasure in Tetro is witnessing the arrival of Ehrenreich, who radiates equal parts enigma and charisma. As tentative, virginal teen Bennie attempts to latch onto closed-down Tetro, the young star’s emotional availability is arrestingly sensitive. Nothing in this novice actor’s wounded turn is calculated; there is not a movement or inflection that doesn’t feel absolutely natural or real.

While Tetro is decidedly a minor film from Coppola, every frame clearly signals the work of a master. The luscious, HD cinematography, courtesy of DP Mihai Malaimare, Jr. (Youth Without Youth), primarily rendered in high-contrast black-and-white, is occasionally piqued with deeply saturated color flashbacks and expressive operatic sequences, mounted as if lensed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes is referenced in the screenplay, and for good reason).

Tetro loses its footing in an extended climax involving the revelation of a big family secret (clear around the halfway point) and collision of past and present, veering into melodrama and abrupt tonal shifts. The ambitious screenplay has much on its mind about estranged fathers, brothers, mothers and past transgressions which are not quite given their due in the conclusion.

The usually arcane approach of fashioning a self-reflexive screenplay about the troubles of a great artist—a mostly self-indulgent and esoteric device—is routinely shopworn in the hands of lesser filmmakers. But Coppola conveys his young character’s coming of age from naiveté to artist as young man, as well as Tetro’s secrets and neuroses, with expert delicacy.

Tetro is currently in release at select Landmark Theatres across the country.

- Lee Shoquist