Frownland [Blu-ray] [Criterion Collection]

Director: Ronald Bronstein Ronald Bronstein

Overview

"Erstwhile New York City arthouse projectionist Ronald Bronstein makes his feature debut as a writer-director with Frownland. Dore Mann stars in the film as Keith, who clearly suffers from some type of serious social disorder. Keith has a great deal of trouble communicating. He stammers, he hems and haws, and eventually the words spew out of him in such an urgent torrent that he can't make himself understood. Keith shares a Brooklyn apartment with struggling musician Charles (Paul Grimstad, who composed the score for the film), and they have an antagonistic relationship. Keith pesters Charles about paying the electric bill. Charles, who clearly feels put upon by having to share the same space with Keith, responds with unbridled and pointed insult. Charles, we learn, has his own problems. Keith's source of income is unclear, but he does have a job going door-to-door in the suburbs to raise money for a vaguely shady charity. It's a job for which he's blatantly ill-suited. Keith's social life, such as it is, consists mainly of harassing a hapless bartender, Sandy (David Sandholm), who has somehow come onto his radar, and trying to calm the frequently distraught Laura (Mary Bronstein, the filmmaker's wife, here credited as Mary Wall). At one point, he attempts to use sock puppets to lift her spirits. ""Are those my socks?"" Laura unhappily responds. Ronald Bronstein self-distributed Frownland for its theatrical run."

Product Details

Release Date:	08/16/2022
UPC:	0715515275019
Original Release:	2007
Source:	Criterion Collection
Language:	English
Time:	1:46:00
Sales rank:	14,302

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Dore Mann	Keith
Paul Grimstad	Charles,Composer
David Sandholm	Sandy
Carmine Marino	Carmine
Mary Wall	Laura
Paul Grant	Exam-man

Technical Credits

Ronald Bronstein

Ronald Bronstein	Director,Screenwriter,Casting
Marc Raybin	Producer
Ignacio Carballo	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Writer-director Ronald Bronstein, who makes his feature debut with Frownland, and his wife, Mary Bronstein, who plays a supporting role in the film, have a connection to the nebulous mumblecore movement, having starred together in Joe Swanberg's web series, Butterknife. But it would be a mistake to call Frownland "mumblecore." Sure, Keith (Dore Mann) does more than his share of mumbling, but the film itself is more of a prolonged anguished yowl than a mumble. Composing a vividly etched, bleakly comic urban nightmare in grainy 16 mm, Bronstein initially presents Keith and his grim subsistence lifestyle in such a way that it's hard not to agree with his snarky roommate, Charles (the brilliantly deadpan Paul Grimstad), who cruelly berates Keith, summing him up as "a burbling troll in his underwear." Through Mann's discomfitingly raw and empathetic performance, we come to a kind of understanding of Keith that renders his plight genuinely harrowing. Bronstein demonstrates not just talent and passion but tremendous canniness as a filmmaker, including an extended comic sequence in which Charles applies for a job at a standardized test prep company, and meets another pathetically overeducated and cynical New Yorker (Paul Grant), who seems to see him with a disdain comparable to that with which Charles sees Keith, before hilariously revealing his own essential hopelessness. That sequence serves as a necessary intermission of sorts, making Keith's inexorable downward spiral more bearable to witness. Frownland will certainly not be to everyone's taste, but for those who can stomach it, it's a powerfully raw, unfiltered vision of insurmountable alienation and urban squalor. The film's unique emotional palette and its startling and laudable lack of compromise make it a must-see for more adventurous filmgoers.