City Cinema Classic of the Month: The Magic of Marciano

Drama. 14A, mature themes.
Dir: Tony Barbieri, Canada/France/US, 2000, 100 min.
Nastassja Kinski, Robert Forster, Cody Morgan, Jennifer Overton, Mary Vingoe.
Winner: Seattle International Film Festival New American Cinema Award.

Opening night live Q&A with producers Luciano Lisi and Christine Kavanagh.

“Fine performances and an abiding intelligence are the hallmarks of The Magic of Marciano, an engaging, and sensitively rendered tale of a young boy’s passage through some turbulent emotional waters… James is a 9-year-old who, at the best of times, is left to his own devices. His single mother Katie (Kinski), a diner waitress in a quiet coastal town, is living with a loutish layabout… An obviously bright kid without role models or motivation at home, James isn’t doing as well as he might at school, and more or less foists himself upon Henry (Forster), a confidant and genial man who spends his days prepping his boat for a round-the-world sail… Just when James imagines things are looking up for him, matters take a considerable turn for the worse when Katie unaccountably takes Curt back in… Barbieri looks at his characters with a psychological exactitude that in itself is absorbing. Kinski’s Katie is a complex woman who, having undoubtedly always got by too easily on her looks, has neglected to build up other qualities of character… Kinski gives an extremely sharp reading of this fragile, imbalanced and reckless woman. By contrast, Forster’s Henry is the picture of a truly decent human being, a man comfortable in his own skin and with his place in the world… Forster makes him an immensely sympathetic, even magnetic individual whose eventual difficulties in deciding how best to help James are conveyed with perfect clarity…. Shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia, pic looks good and is enhanced by Harry Gregson-Williams’ fine score.” —Todd McCarthy, Variety