Alejandro Polanco, Isamar Gonzales
The Iranian-American director’s second feature grafts family melodrama onto a documentary, revealing an economy of leftovers operating in a strip of car repair shops near Shea Stadium. In this refugee camp for car parts and recent immigrants, 12 year-old Alejandro and his 16 year-old sister Isamar are forced to take up the New York work ethic. By day they don thick adult skins to carve out a living, by night they moonlight in more illicit enterprises, and the rituals of adolescent development awkwardly erupt into these workaholic routines. Rather than mine his characters’ cuteness, Bahrani lets their situation take its toll, and their behaviors get ugly.A similar version of this review appears in the February 27 issue of The L Magazine.
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