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Late Bloomer (2012)
Kaye is Bursting Out All Over!!!!
"Late Bloomer" is pure delight with a pot pouri of information that is delivered in such a way that it all slides down like honey. Truly. Kaye, in her 'let me tell you how it is' sort of way, with her easy smile and beautiful countenance, facilitates this 'wanna be gardener extraordinaire' with the ability to listen and hear the facts rather than wave them off and pray that seed flinging will indeed work. Aside from the selfish rewards that come from paying attention, it is astounding that Kaye is virtually a one woman show! She writes and orchestrates every episode, as well as being the on camera talent and off camera planet herald and green grower. This show is fabulous!
Adultolescence (2011)
A young woman wrestles with the challenges of leaving home... for the second time.
This is a journalistic-style, home movie shot in the director's childhood home, making it implicitly nostalgic because it has such an unsentimental commitment to the small gap between past and present.
Homecoming is both an unattained goal and always out of reach, but it's Lea May who just won't let the past or present go- the one who keeps digging up people's dirt. She's not investigating. She's not suspecting. Her personality precipitates it: her innocence and indigence make it impossible for her to gloss over, forget about, swallow the not-so-ideal things that seep up through the seams. Yet, when a breakthrough seems eminent, Lea's inability to face her own fears and misplaced blame brings her further away.
Presumably, this is a past and home Lea would have been delighted to shed a few years earlier: Mom making sure he's gotten enough to eat, Mom controlling her sex life, Mom being cynical and critical of her career dreams... and dad being the middle man or mostly absent. Yet, there is a kind of magical thinking where if she sees herself as if she's in a movie, all will turn out well.
In reality, things stay the same inside her parents' home, while outside, Lea finds herself older and always wresting with how she can let go of the past when family is forever? Indie camera-work follows close against the subjects, and there is slight amateur, digital quality appropriate for a movie that sees life as unpolished and constantly improvised. Other older film mediums like Super 8 are also used to give the movie just the sense of nostalgia it needs and helps the audience to follow jumps in not just the subjective time-line, but subjective points-of-view as well, along with filmmaker Vicky Shen's own breezy rhythms.