Gifted child actors steal spotlight at Sundance

MANDIGO. Moving scene with Paul Dano. photo: www.zimbio.com

LOS ANGELES—Three child actors, one as young as 2 years old, stole their respective films shown in the Sundance Film Festival that ends Sunday.

Quvenzhane Wallis, who was only 6 years old when she shot “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” got a standing ovation from an audience of over 1,000 during the film’s world premiere in the festival.

In her stunning feature-film acting debut, Quvenzhane plays Hushpuppy, a girl being trained to fend for herself by her wildman dad, Wink (Dwight Henry, also a neophyte actor), who is terminally ill. They live in a Louisiana bayou cut off from the world by a sprawling levee. With her Afro hair and boots, the astonishingly talented breakout actress displays her character’s feral spirit and vulnerability at the same time.

Poetic lyricism

In his feature directorial debut, Benh Zeitlin is inspiring critics to mention Terrence Malick in praising the movie’s poetic lyricism. In Benh’s screenplay with Lucy Alibar, Wink is preparing Hushpuppy for the time when ice caps melt, devastating the earth, especially their bayou, and unleashing prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With her obvious intelligence and emotional range, Quvenzhane is “girl power” personified, who learns lessons in survival as her community on the outskirts of civilization is ravaged by a storm.

Quvenzhane, who was only 5 years old when she auditioned for the role, is a startling find. Remember her name. “Beasts,” which was bought by Fox Searchlight Pictures after a reportedly intense bidding war, was one of the most talked about films in the festival.

When we were watching “The End of Love,” we marvelled at the chemistry and easy banter between actor, Mark Webber, and toddler Isaac, as they played father and son onscreen. Well, it turns out that the 2-year-old is Mark’s son in real life. Still, Isaac’s unselfconscious presence and disarming spontaneity are something to behold, especially for someone so young.

In his second directing effort, Mark also wrote the semi-fictionalized story of his character, a struggling actor raising a son on his own. Mark and Isaac’s mom are reportedly separated in real life, but in “The End of Love,” the mother character died in an accident for more dramatic effect.

Mark goes to auditions with actresses like Amanda Seyfried (playing herself), but with Isaac on the floor and distracting him, these readings don’t go well. Way behind in his rent payments, the hapless father is also coping with the tragic loss of his wife.

Part Filipina Shannyn Sossamon (who started out with the late Heath Ledger in “A Knight’s Tale”) is a refreshing, beguiling presence as the owner of a children’s play center who crosses paths with the father and son.

All throughout the film shot cinema verite style, Isaac keeps us glued to the screen, because he is such a natural. Isaac’s conversations with Mark, whether they are eating breakfast together or in the car, are the film’s strongest points.

Emotional high point

In director So Yong Kim’s confident third film, “For Ellen,” Shaylena “Shay” Mandigo doesn’t appear until the last half of the film—but her scenes with Paul Dano is the movie’s emotional high point. Paul plays Joby, an aspiring rock star set to divorce his wife—but, he has a change of heart about forfeiting all custody of his 6-year-old daughter, Ellen (Shaylena). Joby has been absent for most of Ellen’s young life, but he suddenly pines to meet and get to know her.

Joby finally arranges a two-hour visit. In the tentative interaction between the father and daughter meeting for the first time, the very young Shaylena matches Paul’s brilliance. Paul is simply moving as he essays an absent father’s attempts to connect with and know his daughter. Shaylena pierces filmgoers’ hearts when she finally asks her father: “Why didn’t you see me before?”

Without lapsing into easy sentimentality, the father and daughter somehow find an uneasy bond. When Joby takes Ellen home after two hours but then slips back into her room for a few more moments with her, Paul and Shaylena are even more touching as they exchange emotionally resonant words for maybe the last time.

We get to see a different side of Paul as a rocker. A scene in which he sings and prances along to a rock song on the jukebox is by itself worth the film ticket price.

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