local color movie reviews

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Now here's a strange and wonderful movie: Mark Rappaport's "Local Color," a fusion of muted black-and-white photography, starkly simple confrontations within a group of eight people and a plot worthy of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. " I've never seen anything quite like it before, although it's Rappaport's third film; he has an offbeat originality and a very dry sense of humor and if you don't like it as much as I did no doubt you'll dislike it very sincerely.

Rappaport's work can be described as minimalist cinema, I suppose, in which everything not absolutely necessary to a scene, or to continuity, is left out. The décor is simple: Lamps, chairs, tables, beds, all unadorned, as if Ernie Bushmiller had taken a leave of absence from "Nancy" to design the sets. But the characters inhabit these spaces with such various personal complications that the movie almost seems cluttered.

The characters include: Two married couples, a gay couple, and two women, one of whom may write a novel about the others. A complication: One of the married women is the twin of one of the gay men. An additional complication: She has an affair with her brother's lover. Other aspects: Troublesome dreams, nightmares, threats of suicide, tales of parents eating their own children.

Rappaport's photography places these people and their problems in a surreal world. As two of the characters talk, for example, each one stands in front of her own photograph on the wall. And the photographs change to reflect their states of mind. The characters are often obviously posed, as when three people at dinner all sit on the far side of the table. Conversations seem to be frozen into tableux. Partners are exchanged at a party, and the movements seem choreographed.

And yet, confoundingly, some of the scenes feel very real. The dialog—which is very subtle, and very more subtle than when it seems blatant—strikes chords that are exactly right. American English as spoken. The dialog builds up into relationships that seem "real; " in the midst of these interior landscapes that keep slipping into still photography, people persist in seeming to be flesh and blood.

There are several scenes nothing short of inspired. One comes when the characters, in their various living roms, watch "All in the Family"…and then, chillingly, the laugh-track moves from the television set into their own lives, so that their dialog is chuckled and howled at and applauded. Now that may sound like an obvious gag, but in "Local Color" it comes out creepy and very effective.

The plot eventually revolves around a gun, and a suicide. The relationships all eventually pay off, for better or worse. The movie is all but indescribable (as by now you have guessed.) But if you want to see something absolutely original, and consistent within its own fantasies, and haunting, and starkly beautiful, give it a try.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film Credits

Local Color (1977)

116 minutes

Jane Campbell as Andrea

Michael Burg as Alvin

Barry De Jasu as Brian

Tom Bair as Andrew

Bob Herron as Fred

Dolores Kenan as Lil

Randy Danson as Viv

Temmie Brodkey as Debbie

Written and directed by

• Mark Rappaport

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Local Color Reviews

While the film's story and acting are its most redeeming factors, the most peculiar element is its narration.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 26, 2020

Despite the color that Mueller-Stahl and Morgan bring to their roles, Local Color remains as flat as a monochrome painting.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 3, 2018

Sporting truly wonderful performances, particularly from Mueller-Stahl, Local Colour is an enjoyable and moving experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 14, 2011

I made it 37 minutes in before concluding that I liked Trapped in Paradise better.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2010

Kriter-director George Gallo has given the stocky, ever-commanding Mueller-Stahl a heroic, bravura role and has been rewarded by the actor with a towering, complex portrayal that is surely among his finest.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 31, 2009

For a purportedly autobiographical work, the events of this labor of love from director George Gallo, fit seamlessly into the fabric of the standard coming-of-age movie.

Full Review | Jul 30, 2009

I suspect Local Color will lose those unfamiliar with the jargon and subtleties of the art world. Skip it.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2009

Obviously a passio project for Gallo but he is never really able to translate that importance to the audience. We never really care or connect with these characters.

Forget The Karate Kid, make room for The Painting Protg!

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 5, 2009

Lacks the quality storytelling and visual beauty needed for all-important critical acclaim and positive word of mouth.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 2, 2009

The sweeping landscapes look flawless, but missing from Local Color's canvas is any nuance in its human elements.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 1, 2009

Local Color is a sappy brick to the audience's forehead.

Full Review | Original Score: .5/4 | Jun 30, 2009

Beneath its layers of sentimentality Local Color means what it is says.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 26, 2009

How is it that a film about the love of art can make art seem so detestable?

Full Review | Jun 24, 2009

Exploring the nurturing and development of artists, this film is more about the performances of Mueller-Stahl and Morgan than anything.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 30, 2008

Local Color is a sensitive portrayal of a young painter trying to sharpen his gifts and it's also a deeply flawed piece of filmmaking. It's a movie that will have you loving and loathing the world of art, often in the same instant.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Oct 18, 2007

A sweet, autobiographical coming-of-age story set in the summer of 1974.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 18, 2007

Even the soft-hearted may find this formulaic yarn of a young man's apprenticeship to a cantankerous artist too rosy-hued and treacly.

Full Review | Oct 13, 2007

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Movie Review | 'Local Color'

Crusty Painter’s Protégé and One Pivotal Summer

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By Stephen Holden

• June 25, 2009

“Local Color,” George Gallo’s heartfelt semi-autobiographical film about an aspiring painter and his curmudgeonly mentor, is so well acted that you almost forgive its formulaic structure, treacly score and earnest voice-over narration.

Behind the clichés is a movie that explores with unusual intensity arguments about representational versus nonrepresentational art that have raged at least since the dawn of Abstract Expressionism. Within the art world those arguments may have been settled long ago, but elsewhere such debate can still trigger strong emotion, which is what “Local Color” wants to do. Those who don’t care will be bored by the endless shoptalk.

Armin Mueller-Stahl plays Nicoli Seroff, a reclusive, well-known landscape painter with whom an 18-year-old student, John Talia Jr. (Trevor Morgan), spends a life-changing summer (in 1974) on the older painter’s Pennsylvania farm. (The movie was filmed in Louisiana.) Nicoli, who emigrated from the Soviet Union to Germany during World War II and subsequently settled in the United States, swills vodka all day, curses a lot and is a passionate advocate of art with feeling. Trees are rooted men, he declares, and clouds places where angels hide.

Nicoli’s aesthetic antagonist, Curtis Sunday (Ron Perlman), is a comically pretentious and effete, ascot-wearing art dealer. Nicoli lures him into heaping praise on the canvases of the mentally retarded children whom Nicoli teaches in his spare time. It may be a grandstanding trick, but the scene is charged with a realist painter’s angry frustration. (Mr. Gallo is a painter.)

Mr. Mueller-Stahl’s splenetic performance lends the 70-something Nicoli, who lost his wife in the war and never recovered, a tragic dimension. Mr. Morgan’s John is a dewy but precociously articulate youth with a backbone. Standing up to his insanely homophobic father (Ray Liotta), who is certain the old painter has sexual designs on his son, he demonstrates unusual self-possession for one so young by going off with Nicoli. While at the farm John develops a crush on Carla (Samantha Mathis), a pretty older neighbor with streaming blond hair, but the movie has the good sense to resist turning the relationship into a misty “Summer of ’42” rehash.

Beneath its layers of sentimentality “Local Color” means what it is says.

The movie is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). The dialogue is filled with profanity.

LOCAL COLOR

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by George Gallo; director of photography, Michael Negrin; edited by Malcolm Campbell; music by Chris Boardman; production designer, Bob Ziembicki; produced by James W. Evangelatos, Julie Lott Gallo, David Permut, Mark Sennet, Thomas Joseph Adams and Denise Evangelatos; released by Monterey Media. At the Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes.

WITH: Armin Mueller-Stahl (Nicoli Seroff), Trevor Morgan (John Talia Jr.), Ray Liotta (John Talia Sr.), Charles Durning (Yammi), Samantha Mathis (Carla), Ron Perlman (Curtis Sunday), Julie Lott (Sandra Sunday) and Diana Scarwid (Edith Talia).

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Local Color

• A successful artist looks back with loving memories on the summer of his defining year, 1974. A talented but troubled 18-year-old aspiring artist befriends a brilliant elderly alcoholic painter who has turned his back on not only art but life. The two form what appears to be at first a tenuous relationship. The kid wants to learn all the secrets the master has locked away inside his head and heart. Time has not been kind to the old master. His life appears pointless to him until the kid rekindles his interest in his work and ultimately gives him the will to live. Together, they give one another a priceless gift. The kid learns to see the world through the master's eyes. And the master learns to see life through the eyes of innocence again. This story is based on a real life experience. — George Gallo
• An young boy, whose only interest is in painting, is excited to meet an old-aged renowned painter. Despite harsh behavior of the painter, the young wants him to be his teacher. The painter agrees. Both travel to countryside. But it turns out be a bitter experience for the young. The teacher not only hates his own subject, but also lost hope in life by his wife's demise many years ago. The turning point happens during their visit to a children home where the teacher relishes himself in teaching physically challenged students. The young then realizes that art in the teacher is still alive but hates it merely due to its present trends. The rest of the story is about how the duo learn a valuable lesson from each other. — cherukupally srikanth
• In 1974, in the suburb of Port Chester, New York, an aspiring teenage artist named John Talia has a troubled relationship with his deeply insecure father who does not understand his talent. While visiting his friend Yammi, John finds that the genius Russian painter Nicoli Seroff lives nearby, and he decides to pay a visit to his hero. John finds a bitter alcoholic elder who still grieves the loss of his wife Anya many years ago, but he successfully befriends the master. When Nicoli travels to the countryside in Pennsylvania for the summer, he invites John to go with him to teach him how to paint. Then John meets Nicoli's neighbor Carla, who grieves over the loss of her son, and the arrogant critic of art and Nicolai's friend Curtis Sunday. During their vacation, the teacher-student relationship between Nicoli and John improves their individual lives. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Local Color

From the start, George Gallo's autobiographical feel-good drama "Local Color" warns auds that cynics may object to the sentiment about to overwhelm the screen. Alas, even the soft-hearted may find this formulaic yarn of a young man's apprenticeship to a cantankerous artist too rosy-hued and treacly.

By Jay Weissberg

Jay Weissberg

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From the start, George Gallo ‘s autobiographical feel-good drama “Local Color ” warns auds that cynics may object to the sentiment about to overwhelm the screen. Alas, even the soft-hearted may find this formulaic yarn of a young man’s apprenticeship to a cantankerous artist too rosy-hued and treacly. With its by-the-book structure and cliched plot, pic wants to flex some cinematic muscle but despite widescreen format remains a strictly small screen affair.

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Undoubtedly a personally meaningful labor of love, painter/scripter/helmer Gallo and past producer/collaborator David Permut raised the $5 million budget mostly through friends and acquaintances, shooting in just 25 days. Pic was one of the last films lensed in Louisiana (successfully posing as Pennsylvania) before Katrina took its toll.

Popular on Variety

John (Trevor Morgan, “Mean Creek”) is a starry-eyed high schooler in 1974 Port Chester, N.Y., who is convinced he’ll leave his mark on the world of painting one day. A devoted admirer of reclusive artist Nicholai Seroff (Armin Mueller Stahl), John ignores advice and presents himself at Seroff’s screen door.

Predictably, the old man isn’t interested in pupils or even conversations with the fresh-faced kid, but — surprise! — persistence pays off and John displays his knowledge of art theory to a reluctantly impressed Seroff, who invites “the little shit” to spend the summer at his Pennsylvania home.

John’s working class dad (Ray Liotta) is convinced the old guy’s a pervert and forbids John from going, but with starry-eyed determination, John sets off anyway.

Initially Seroff simply has the young man deal with household chores, though eventually he opens John’s eyes to the fundamentals of landscape painting.

Of course John also gets his first real kiss that summer, from older neighbor Carla (Samantha Mathis), so art and life and love all come together in a golden haze of nostalgia-drenched light.

But, not content with making this a simple tale of artistic awakening, Gallo throws in simplistic swipes at the pretensions of contemporary art critics who dismiss the beauty of representational works. All this heavy-handed debate stops the drama cold.

Nonetheless, Mueller Stahl avoids the schmaltz and provides a glimpse of a man beyond mere stereotype. Looking like the perfect Fox juvenile, Morgan does his best with stilted lines, his eyes glistening appropriately in the late summer light. As a modern art dealer, Ron Perlman, kitted up in queeny ascots, is just cartoonish, and Diana Scarwid has a thankless role as John’s German-born mother, her accent and character equally indefinable.

Gallo’s choice of widescreen was perhaps a result of his desire to glorify landscape art, and Michael Negrin’s lensing takes advantage of the natural beauty. Incidental music predictably swells during emotional moments, only heightening the pic’s sappiness; the generous smattering of Cat Stevens tunes does a better job at capturing the period than the generic production design.

• Production: An Alla Prima Prods., Permut Presentations presentation of a James W. Evangelatos, Julie Lott Gallo production. Produced by David Permut, Mark Sennet, Julie Lott Gallo, James W. Evangelatos. Executive producers, Charlie Arneson, Allen Clauss, John Papadakis, Katherine Angelos Cusenza, Richard Lott, Diana Lott, Tom Adams, Denise Evangelatos Adams. Co-producers, Robert L. Brown, Evan Hoyt Wasserstrom, Steven A. Longi, Shannon Bae, Bruce Dunn. Directed, written by George Gallo.
• Crew: Camera (color, Panavision widescreen), Michael Negrin; editor, Malcolm Campbell; music, Chris Boardman; production designer, Robert Ziembicki; art director, Bradford Johnson; costume designer, Emily Draper; sound, Richard Schexnayder, Gregory Clark; line producer, David Sosna; associate producer, Brian Gary; assistant director, David Sosna; casting, Lynn Kressel. Reviewed at Tribeca Film Festival (Discovery), New York, April 30, 2006. Running time: 107 MIN.
• With: With: Armin Mueller Stahl, Trevor Morgan, Ray Liotta, Samantha Mathis, Ron Perlman, Diana Scarwid, Julie Lott, Charles Durning, Tom Adams, Taso Papadakis, David Sosna, Nancy Casemore, David Sheftell,

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Local color.

Directed by Mark Rappaport

Mark Rappaport's off center soap opera parody concerning several characters including a barber, his wife, and a pair of incestuous twins.

Jane Campbell Bob Herron Dolores Kenan Michael Burg Tom Bair Barry De Jasu Randy Danson Temmie Brodkey

Director Director

Mark Rappaport

Writer Writer

Editor editor, cinematography cinematography.

Fred Murphy

Rappaport Productions

Releases by Date

Theatrical limited, 19 apr 1977, 21 oct 1977, releases by country.

• Theatrical limited New York New Directors and New Films Festival

116 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by maddie ★★★★½

many times after watching one of Rappaport’s narrative works, i find myself wishing that modern American independent film got over its obsession with the Cassavetes-like honesty and rawness that permeates so much of "mumblecore" film (though i do like some), and learned to find solace and enjoyment in the blatantly fake, the so precisely contrived melodrama that permeates so much of the art of quote unquote Low Culture entertainment; the way cheesy, convoluted soap operas that play out on TV every day are given the same amount of time and attention as the lyrical operas and myths from thousand of years ago, all in relation to present, everyday life. is there much of a difference anyway?

Review by davi b. 1

"The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death"

One thing I like about Rappaport's cinema is that he never puts himself above genres such as melodramas, he never dismiss them as inferior for their sentimentality (as other filmmakers would do). In a way he is doing what Rainer Werner Fassbinder said: to make Hollywood movies without the hypocrisy. In Local Color there are no lush colors that one could expect from a Douglas Sirk film, we are left only with the raw emotions and ugly truths, without a hint of glamour. His cinema seems to be in a battle for some sort of reconciliation between classic and independent films, to recognize their beauty and power while also…

Review by Scott Kelly ★★★½

I think I’ve seen too many movies. I’ve now seen, and liked, two low budget American independent films shot in black and white with “Color” in the title that contain incest.

Review by Evan “Kaizō Haya-shill” Pincus ★★★★

“If you could see the larger perspective, you’d be much happier - in fifty million years, there won’t even be a Mediterranean!”

So frustrating and surprising to me that by the mid-90’s Rappaport gave up on narrative in favor of video essays explicating his views on film and art, because his dramatic works already clearly demonstrate a mind thinking seriously about form and storytelling in ways nobody else was (or is). Still think that Andrew Horn’s narrative features are a bit of an improvement on Rappaport, but there’s still nothing quite like the bubble universe he conjured up in his apartment!

Review by erik reeds ★★★★

my first rappaport. great stuff, this reminds me a lot of andrew horn and i suspect was a precursor to his stuff. kinda overstays its welcome but it treats its characters seriously and fleshes them out in great detail, plus it has a bunch of great little elements that add to it a bunch (the changing picture in the pictureframe was a great one). very excited to see where to go from here!

Review by orson houellebecq ★★★★★ 2

"If you could take a movie of the whole world, one frame every two hundred years, it would look like a bubbling mass of caramel. And if you could see that movie, you'd realize just how trivial our own problems are."

My first time seeing a high quality copy of this. Still amazing of course, and sort of incredible in how it and the other early Rappaport films prefigure so much of the filmmaking that I love the most, most of which came at least ten years later (and also how he did them for almost no money using his own apartment for a set no less... contemporary no-budget filmmakers take note: step up your game, guys). The intentionally stilted…

Review by Catherine Del Monte ★★★★½

Local Color : toutes les distortions que l'on applique sur notre compréhension du monde tel qu'il "est" de façon empirique; l'influence de l'entourage sur ce qui est vérifiable. L'interprétation du spectre.

Le réalisateur présente avec humour dès le début du film une histoire difficile à suivre de personnages reliés de façon complexe aux personnalités multiples, à l'instar de ce que l'on peut s'attendre d'un opéra de trois heures. Je ne me suis donc pas longuement attardée à suivre avec grande attention l'histoire, mais à me laisser emporter par la beauté des scènes. Rappaport maintient un fin équilibre entre le populaire et l'érudition, en évoquant mythes, télévision, oeuvres picturales.

En gros: l'angle dans lequel on se positionne modifie notre perception des…

Review by Wormy ★★★★½

Fucking brutal.

TBH, I've always watched Rappaport with more of a sense of curiosity and appreciation than rapture. But this one... it's a dark chamber - where you stare at the cold and indifferent face of someone you love as they tell you 'you need me, more than I need you' with nothing but the hiss of cinema. Cut to a knife ripping through a curtain. Every domestic anxiety spread before you on a table - silently screaming at you: 'remember these fears of betrayal, loss of self, meaninglessness, and disappointment? Those fears are real, and are not unfounded'. The Hell of domestic life gone wrong communicated with painful clarity though these very quiet, and deceivingly simple images.

Review by Cora Berube ★★★★½

As I return to this film, I realize how much it affected me. On the couch at my old apartment, laughing at the dialogue when Brian is on the phone with his wife in an early scene. It’s just that — I didn’t get it. I didn’t get the soap opera format that was the strength of this work, the way the flat-toned but weighted dialogue made this a melodrama like one I’d never experienced. It’s one of few two hour films where I am entranced for each moment, each detail.

I find that the character of Andrew is dearest to me, as he was the first time I watched Local Color . But this time, Lil was my core interest.…

Review by hawksquill ★★★★★

probably rappaport’s best script. biting, maudlin, hysterical, to genre, and goddamn smart. like the best deconstructions, this film performs what it messes with, and without pedantry; it’s an inside job. “a martyr on the altar of outmoded sentiments” indeed.

Review by Dozzyrok ★★★★½

At the very end of my exploration of Mark Rappaport’s narrative feature filmography, I find what I was searching for the whole time. This is the absolute closest I think he got to employing my favorite types of themes, tics, and images that he most showcases later in Exterior Night. It might be my favorite besides that! Though I have to revisit the others sometime too.

Review by Justin Kelly ★★★★ 1

“If you could take a movie of the whole world, one frame every 200 years, it would look like a bubbling mass of caramel. And if we could see that movie, we’d realize just how trivial our own problems are.”

Depravity, existentialism, and witty repartee in a dreamworld of lacunal interconnection. Probably Rappaport's most ambitious and fully realized trip into the shadow of Hollywood melodrama, though I would've loved more quirks like the silent movie intertitles revealing everyone's thoughts at dinner, or the eavesdropping neighbors hooting through the wall like the sitcom soundtrack to a charged conversation. By the end of the 70s Rappaport was poised to become the connective tissue of American independent film between Cassavettes and Jarmusch; I'm curious to learn more of the history behind his strange career, his disappearance in the 80s and hard turn into criticism starting in the 90s.

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‘Local Color’ an inventive gem of early independent cinema

Posted on Published: October 9, 2013  - Last updated: November 10, 2015

Written and directed by Mark Rappaport

Local Color is an independent American film from a time long before “independent” could be used as a marketing device, before it could be (laughably) associated with Pulp Fiction and Miramax, and long before the word was bastardized to “indie.” It thus retains a grittiness and a smart amateurism that sets itself apart from Hollywood sentimentalism while simultaneously being unabashedly in love with glitz and glamour as well as melodramatic material of rampant adultery and suicide. This is in large part due to director Mark Rappaport’s appreciation of the pulpy elements of Hollywood and its grandstanding messages that somehow, no matter how recycled, manage to seek out and endear audiences. Rappaport would later direct faux-biopics (more visual essays) of legendary actors Jean Seberg and Rock Hudson, seeking the undertones in each of their filmographies — the female form’s place in show business for Seberg and Hudson’s perhaps-not-so-hidden homosexuality. However, in Local Color , Rappaport’s fascination extends to everything one can imagine in a film, taking each element, flipping it on its head, and proceeding to use the result as hilarious postmodern cinema.

Although Local Color  is usually credited as being a minimalist film through its foregoing of complicated set design, Rappaport has intentionally conducted a feeling of excess in its textual elements. A shifting interior monologue among the cast of eight complicates our perspective of how this film is meant to be felt: without a form of protagonist, we are meant to reevaluate all of the characters’ actions when their intentions are laid bare. The cast consists of a pair of twins, both named Andy, their respective lovers, an aging dentist and his wife, and two more women, each trying to break away from their fidelity with nightmares of murder and disappointment getting in the way. If this were not enough, there is simply too much plot, leaving an adequate summary to either be ineffective or impossible. There is a causal narrative, yes, but these events do not build in any form of act structure. There is no feeling of climax or relief, simply a fleeting chain of conversations sometimes recalling past events in the film, yet sometimes interjected with a narrator adding an unscreened prologue or epilogue as if the current running time is not enough for Rappaport to throw information at us, completing his thought as postscript.

Rappaport, through both Beckett-like simplicity as well as limited funds, has a minimalistic set design, yet uses what little furniture he has to evoke a closed, intimate space of bedrooms and cramped living rooms. The melodramatic actions taking place within mainly interior scenarios is reminiscent of a Bergman chamber drama if Bergman had grown up in New York and focused on the sexual rather than the spiritual. Even this is sometimes discarded, revealing only a plain black canvas upon which faces take center stage, meticulously mapped onto the frame with a rigid geometric position of staging. Rappaport has a clear idea of which parts of his actors he would like you to see, discarding naturalistic movement in favor of playing with expectations (a character even physically walks out of frame when a monologue begins). Many conversations are held with the actors facing toward the camera instead of each other, sometimes engaged with television, but always used to evoke a kind of emotional distance, also apparent in their monotone, uninflected manner of speaking. Rappaport is again questioning our preconceived notion of what the image of cinema should be, prescription by realists or formalists be damned.

Such a dry experiment by itself would foam the mouths of film geeks — perhaps placing questions of cinema would entice many, but Local Color is genuinely funny and engaging, aware of itself, the avant-garde, and melodramatic Hollywood, holding none of these as sacred. One of the women, Andrea, notes that, after an art competition in which each of the classic pieces are now an act of comedic appropriation to look like caricatures of the women sitting next to them, they all suddenly check each other for breast cancer. An introduction of the twins Andrea and Andrew depict them with titled heads and torsos as if prepared for their senior portraits, each with a t-shirt reading “Andy”. The film is aware of Chekhov’s gun, realizing that people familiar with the concept will wait for its use, thus deciding to toy with its placement, magically reappearing in damn near everyone’s possession until it is finally used — offscreen.

High art feats and humor notwithstanding, Local Color  also firmly grounds itself into a trashy-camp aesthetic for dialogue. Two-way conversations soon become monologues soon become interior monologues only to end with a spoken non-sequitur and switch to another character, possibly undoing everything just built up by the monologue. Even the most surreal elements, dreams of giant cards and a dangerous room full of grandmothers, are acutely aware and spoken of directly. Imagine a Lynch or Buñuel film if the lead were to exclaim, “All right, what the hell is going on?”

As character perspectives are perpetually switched, so are the couples’ partners. Andrea becomes intimate with both her brother, Andrew, and his boyfriend, Brian. The dentist, Alvin, occasionally sleeps with his patients, yet chastises his wife Lil for her potential infidelity. Glances and subtle movements take place in a dark theatre as an unspoken and unknown battle for a character’s attention. These complications are ripe for melodrama: previous passive-aggressiveness is realized in dream-like sequences, accented by a rare dramatic lighting and finally bubbling into chaotic shouting matches and promises of violence. Lil and Alvin spar in their living room, our view finally slightly askew as the laugh track from “All in the Family” creeps into the dialogue, working as an eerie punctuation, applauding threats and death wishes. This amplification is emulated further throughout the film, never quite resting as it quietly pokes at conventions of Hollywood’s past while still fully embracing them. As Rappaport  points  out, “…it’s all retreads — human relationships have been explored, re-explored, de-explored, and yet we still respond to the grain of truth that we recognize at the heart of these situations when they’re represented on a screen. One wants the falseness to be true.” Then, after the climax, it politely leaves, having taken its toll on the cast and now offering a respite: the camera’s last message goes outside our interior shot hell for a slow ghostly walk on the beach.

Rappaport’s vision is a strange and truly distinct work that manages be self-reflexive and inventive. It is a mélange of Bergman chamber dramas, old Hollywood tearjerkers, Beckett’s simple contemplation, Cassavetes’s focus on the actor, possibly a precursor of the mumblecore movement, and could be related to much more (it is claimed as a Rorschach test  here ). Although From the Journals of Jean Seberg may be the best of Rappaport’s filmography, Local Color shows the rapturous work of someone who admired cinema to the point of breaking it down and rereading it — a whimsicality that should be placed within the canon of American independent cinema.

— Zach Lewis

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Local Color Reviews

• 1 hr 47 mins
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Writer-director George Gallo's impressive portrait of an artist as a young man features masterful performances by Trevor Morgan and Armin Mueller-Stahl. Morgan plays an aspiring painter who becomes the protégé to Mueller-Stahl's troubled Russian master, and both learn lessons in life and living from each other. The film is based on Gallo's sentimental journey to his youth spent learning the artist's craft. Samantha Mathis, Ray Liotta, Diana Scarwid, Ron Perlman, Julie Lott.

Incomprehensible 16mm soap opera disguised as an art film. Eight characters interact in different ways, dreams and reality converge, and a gun is passed around. Produced, written, edited, and directed by Rappaport, so he is the one to blame for foisting this on the world.

Local Color (2006)

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Review: local color.

Local Color takes every cliché of nascent-artist movies and serves them up with an arrogant lack of shame.

A sappy brick to the audience’s forehead, loaded with reactionary hogwash and the tastelessness of fried plastic, Local Color takes every cliché of nascent-artist movies and serves them up with an arrogant lack of shame. Insufficiently inspired by writer-director George Gallo’s relationship with an artistic mentor, the plot follows 18-year-old painter John (Trevor Morgan) as he struggles in the 1974 New York suburbs with his unruly work and the homophobic anxieties of his brutish father (Ray Liotta in a wifebeater). Soon John is at the door of a local past master, a misanthropic Russian neo-impressionist (Armin Mueller-Stahl, his German accent unchanged) whose reputation has been downgraded by “the bullshit elite” for being representational. It takes all of three scenes for John to melt the cranky bastard and gain an invitation to his summerhouse, where lessons in life and art proceed in dreary Hallmark style. (Gallo’s soothing postcard landscapes, drowned in a syrupy score, are his own oil-on-velvet canvases.) Mueller-Stahl’s vodka-steeped rages against modernism in favor of beauty that’s limited to an undefined “shared experience” find a whipping boy in his progressive critic friend (a mincing, ascot-wearing Ron Perlman) who is tricked, in a tacky comedic misfire, into praising the classroom splatter of the old man’s Down syndrome students. Less crassly offensive but just as head-shaking are how the death of Mueller-Stahl’s wife in Stalinist purges is caused by his barking hostility, and the predictability of doe-eyed Morgan’s inevitable infatuation with the lovely older woman (Samantha Mathis) whose own secret tragedy proves an obstacle to the teen protégé’s deflowering. In a preemptive opening narration, John/Gallo decries critics as enemies of love (“If you wish to be a cynic, that’s your choice”), but lazy follow-your-heart tripe like Local Color is custom-made to draw the wrath not of the cynical, but the marginally conscious.

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Bill Weber worked as a proofreader, copy editor, and production editor in the advertising and medical communications fields for over 30 years. His writing also appeared in Stylus Magazine .

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Local Color (2006)

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A successful artist looks back with loving memories on the summer of his defining year, 1974. A talented but troubled 18-year-old aspiring artist befriends a brilliant elderly alcoholic painter who has turned his back on not only art but life. The two form what appears to be at first a tenuous relationship. The kid wants to learn all the secrets the master has locked away inside his head and heart. Time has not been kind to the old master. His life appears pointless to him until the kid rekindles his interest in his work and ultimately gives him the will to live. Together, they give one another a priceless gift. The kid learns to see the world through the master's eyes. And the master learns to see life through the eyes of innocence again. This story is based on a real life experience.

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LOCAL COLOR

"rekindled passion".

What You Need To Know:

(RoRo, C, AC, P, Ho, LLL, V, S, AA, D, M) Strong Romantic worldview where characters are encouraged to follow their hearts and pursue their dreams against the odds, with some Christian elements including character who responds yes to the questions, “Do you believe in God?” and “Do you believe your prayers are heard?” and character states that, in order to make great art, people must make peace with mortality and bow to a higher power and says that art needs to uplift men’s souls, plus some anti-Communist, patriotic elements in that older main character’s family was killed during Stalin’s purges in Russia and he fled that country to emigrate to America – a country that he loves and has adopted as his own and homosexual content where movie attacks an extreme opponent of that lifestyle; 95 strong obscenities and 9 profanities; father hits son across the face; minor sexual material such as man eyes a couple of college girls, a couple of sexual references, light kissing, and some homosexual references; no nudity; strong alcohol use including one alcoholic character and young underage boy occasionally drinks a glass of vodka when it is offered to him; light smoking depicted; and, lying, boy disobeys parents to pursue his dream, one character’s history includes getting pregnant out of wedlock but she kept her baby, father is extremely anti-homosexual and fears his son might be a homosexual because he is a painter and associates with older men, older main character has a very negative outlook on life due to the pain of past experiences and, although his outlook changes, it is devoid of God, and a poor parental role model.

More Detail:

LOCAL COLOR is a somewhat boring independent movie that tries to be original and entertaining, but never quite reaches its full potential as the positive elements are ultimately spoiled by excessive foul language, alcoholism, and an extremely anti-homosexual character who is violent. Also, audiences unfamiliar with the painting terms used by the characters will find themselves lost and disengaged from the story.

The story opens in 1974 with John (played by Trevor Morgan), a young, aspiring painter with little opportunity for art education having to seek out his own means of learning and study. Upon discovering that famous Russian painter Nicoli Serrof (played by Armin Mueller-Stahl) lives nearby, John initiates a tenuous friendship with him.

Against the wishes of his violent and severely anti-homosexual father, John travels with Nicoli to his summer home in Pennsylvania in hopes to further his painting skills, only to discover that the cantankerous old man, suffering from self-guilt, bitterness, and deep sadness has lost his passion for painting and no longer finds any meaning or purpose in it. Rather than teach John the secrets to becoming a master painter, Nicoli puts him to working fixing up the house in an effort to dissuade John from his dream.

Through the challenges, John’s determination and enthusiasm for painting eventually helps Nicoli rediscover his artistic passion and move past the bitterness in his heart.

LOCAL COLOR contains some commendable elements in regards to the light Christian worldview that the character of Nicoli seems to espouse when he speaks of making peace with mortality and bowing to a higher power, although in the end his healing is devoid of God. Other positive elements include the passionate and hard-working character qualities of John and the friendship that forms between he and Nicoli.

Sadly, there are many production elements lacking in the movie. For example, the dialogue concerning painting is difficult to follow, especially for someone unfamiliar with it. Although Armin Mueller-Stahl does an excellent job portraying the character of Nicoli, the rest of the acting seems stilted and one-dimensional, making the characters difficult to relate to by the viewer. This is also due in part to the plodding, mediocre script that doesn’t allow for much genuine character development. The filmmakers seem like they are trying too hard to be original, and have ended up with a movie that is a bit over the top, almost cheesy, so to speak.

Overall, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution due to the movie’s excessive foul language, alcoholism, Romantic worldview, and its stereotype of an anti-homosexual character.