SMALL TIME
Film Arcade
Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten
Director: Niav Conty
Screenwriter: Niav Conty
Cast: Audrey Grace Marshall, Kevin Loreque, Holter Graham, Dominique Johnson, Maria Hasen, Elissa Middleton, Sina Rassi
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 11/15/21
Opens: November 11, 2021 streaming on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play
During his primary battle with Hillary Clinton, Obama was caught in an uncharacteristic moment of loose language. Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the presidential hopeful declares: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Not the wisest of his aphorisms, one that ranks with Hillary’s comment about Trump supporters’ being “a basket of deplorables.” If they needed an excuse to vote Republican, white folks in the Pennsylvania rust belt and in the small towns of the Midwest had two.
Maybe “Small Time” writer-director Niav Conty was disturbed by Obama’s quote, maybe not. In any case her depiction of people living in what we New York elitists call flyover country aligns with what we city slickers think of “hayseeds.” Conty, whose other full-length narrative film “Un peu plus d’éternité” deals with a woman who “knows she exists but does not know why,” sees life in (judging by a truck registration plate) upstate New York through the eyes of a young girl.
Filming behind the lens as well as in the director’s chair in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, Conty finds Emma (Audrey Graced Marshall) looking back over three and one-half years of her impressionable life. While many a spoiled kid in Manhattan or Berkeley or Shaker Heights would be whining and crying at similar experiences, Emma is upbeat almost throughout. Nary a frown or a scowl, no harsh words, no searingly critical eye.
Though she is supervised by Sadie (Maria Hasen), her grandmother—who doubles as caretaker of her battle-scarred, emotionally disturbed son Lonnie (Kevin Loreque)—she appears confident enough to experience life in a village that appears to have a population of 57. Over the years Emma fp has seen enough to make her wonder, like Anne in “Un peu plus d’eternité, why she exists and how long she can continue in that state. After all, the opening shows her close up to the embalmed body of one caretaker, staring at him enough to know that perhaps one day she, too, will be decked out for exhibit.
We’re told that the red states are not immune from drug addiction. Emma sees that first-hand in her mom, who she tries to wake up from a drug overdose, a woman who clings not necessary to guns and religion but certainly to the appeal of heroin. Consider it a bad thing when a girl still in elementary school has to be a parent to adults.
A moment of enlightenment comes when Emma places a fallen tooth under the pillow only to find not one dime to replace it the next day. Her grandmother assures her that while there are no fairies, there are demons, that we are in a war, and that we must win it. Emma is the kind of child that many of us wish we had. Though sometimes in public you see a youngster acting with maturity beyond her age, eyes flashing inner light and kindness, you can probably bet that behind the scenes, behind the locked door of her parents’ home, she throws the tantrums that all parents dread, guilty that they are not bringing up their kid the right way. Nobody in “Small Time” thinks like that. The older people take things as they come, they appear to have no plans to watch “Face the Nation” or plan safaris even within our own country. And so does Emma, who though shown over a period of over three years seems just as mature when the film began as she does now.
Marshall is a wonderful performer, seen recently in nine episodes of “The Flight Attendant” (about a reckless flight attendant who wonders whether she killed the dead man in her hotel room), embraces her coming-of-age role in a work that shows once again the virtues of small-budget movies that can command more attention from the film community than anything featuring The Rock.
104 minutes. © 2021 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – A-
Acting – A
Technical – B+
Overall – A-