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It’s always strange to see Edie Falco outside of
her normal element. On HBO’s “Oz”and “The Sopranos,” she uses
her Brooklyn-bred speech patterns to project an unmistakable
air of authority and an intolerance of nonsense. Whether as
Officer Diane Whittlesey or as Mob wife Carmela Soprano, Falco’s
clipped accent and open face make her a bullshit-detector
of the highest order.
In Sunshine State, though, Falco trades in “Fugeddaboutit”
for “Jest fergit abowdit,” sporting a weary Southeastern drawl
that makes no bones about how hard life is. As Marly Temple,
the owner and manager of a small hotel/restaurant in the tiny
Florida town of Plantation Island, Falco is terrific, mining
the role for equal parts pathos, bemusement, and regret. As
is her style, Falco concentrates the entire performance in
those wide, deep-set eyes and the varied pursings of her lips.
It’s a performance that lays bare the truth about fighting
for control of your surroundings, even as what happens around
you is proving you powerless.
In fact, that leashing of nature, the fear of just letting
things happen, is what Sunshine State is all about.
John Sayles ( jump
to interview has structured his film into
two separate stories that present that oh-so-modern tendency
to destroy nature for the purpose of creating an artificial
“natural” environment. As the film sees it, the tragedy of
the human condition is our persistent desire to modernize
everything, to find procedure in even the most randomly beautiful
aspects of the natural world. This could lead to clumsy moralizing,
but, thankfully, except for a few heavy-handed moments involving
treatises on the loss of a simpler day, Sayles avoids any
pap. He allows his characters to speak for him, something
many of today’s more serious filmmakers would do well to learn.
Irony is never lost on him either, and the frequent contradictions
of the human creature are juxtaposed with the unhurried simplicity
of nature.
Like Sayles’s best film, Lone Star, Sunshine State
resembles a subtler, more plot-driven Altman film, with
its many intersecting characters and separate storylines.
These films are gently political, with a social consciousness
that is less of a declaration and more of a nudge. But where
Lone Star branched out its intimate story to encapsulate
all that it is to be Texan, Sunshine State sticks more
to its individual characters, their relationships, and how
the rapidly changing world affects them personally. There
are two main stories here, each taking place on the same beach
but in different towns. Marly’s (Falco) story finds her running
a motel that began as an exciting venture to make something
of herself but has gradually become a prison to her. She dreads
even going to work because she feels like her life isn’t amounting
to anything more than making other people comfortable as they
visit a town where she’s trapped. When developers begin surveying
the beach front where Marly’s motel is located, she finds
herself in a strange situation: Sure, she’s miserable, and
the money she would make by selling the place could help her
realize something better for herself, but at the same time,
she’s now living the dream that she once had, and even though
it’s become a nightmare for her, she has still achieved her
goals, something few people get a chance to do. To complicate
matters, she finds herself in a fling with the landscape architect
(Ordinary People’s Hutton) in charge of surveying
the land for development.
Meanwhile, in neighboring town Lincoln Beach, an African-American
community still suffering the lingering effects of segregation,
Desiree Perry (the phenomenal Bassett) has come home
to visit her mother (Alice) and show off her new doctor
husband (McDaniel, graciously playing that poor schlep
stuck between two feuding women). Lincoln Beach, too, is being
eyed by developers. Dr. Lloyd (Cobbs, one of the finest
character actors around; you’ve seen him before, he’s in everything)
leads the protest against the developers, citing history and
family as the biggest casualties of progress. Desiree’s slow
rebuilding with her mother reflects the gathering of a community
desperate to keep what’s theirs. Angela Bassett is by far
one of the best actresses working today, and she’s sadly underused
by Hollywood. The natural sound of her voice, that insinuating
tone, takes her far in making Desiree into the most human
character in the film, complete with the earnestness and the
underlying emotions flying around and crashing up against
one another in her efforts to reconcile with her mother. It’s
one of Bassett’s quieter performances, but one of her more
powerful.
A couple of peripheral stories involve Francine Pickney’s
(Steenburgen) bid to create a town tradition in the
“Pirate Queen Pageant,” something she finds is much more difficult
than she thought, even while her husband (Clapp) repeatedly
tries to commit suicide unbeknownst to her;and the return
of a washed-up football player to his hometown, where he commits
the unforgivable sin of coming home to profit off his history.
The more entertaining of the two is definitely Francine’s.
I think I’m probably the only person left in the world who
finds Mary Steenburgen absolutely hysterical, and to hell
with everyone else, she created my favorite moments in this
film.
Unfortunately, though, none of the stories in Sunshine
State ends up feeling like they’ve been told correctly.
It’s not that they’re lacking in total resolution (which they
are, but that’s not a problem, that’s real life). The problem
lies in the fact that, while the stories themselves seem to
conclude that being in your element is the best thing for
you, the film itself ends up deciding that branching out in
life and following your dreams is what’s necessary to establish
happiness. Which is the healthier advice? Perhaps it’s saying
that your dream should be what is easiest to achieve. But
I don’t think so. I think the incongruity here, that refusal
to cut loose and make a decision, eventually shows how the
film itself reflects that fear of losing control. Letting
go means just that: letting go.
—Cole Sowell
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While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
