Queer movie, young movie, movie arty, 24 hours in New York won a performance prize at Sundance and a Best Film Award at the Berlinale 2023, drawing our attention to this independent feature film from the United States. And it's good, since he came out on February 20 in physical format...
The crazy day of Feña
Feña (Lio Mehiel), a trans young man, lives quietly in New York. Quietly? At least until the subsequent reappearance of his ex-boyfriend, sister and father, all during the same day. Three relationships eclipsed by its transitude, which it will have to face again with more or less ease during a long, very long day.
The young director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz injections into this feature film much of its being, especially in the constant "in-between" in which the protagonists of 24 hours in New York. An in-between gender, sexual orientation but also nationality, which he shares entirely with Feña. An in-between that may prove overwhelming when it comes to combining a self-passed and a self-present difficult to miscible. So he attacks with 24 hours in New York build this powerful narrative, where transidentity is neither a distant background nor the only characterization of his character. And according to his own words: «trans-ness» of our protagonist is overshadowed by his pure humanity. This ability to meet people where they are, at a human level, directly touches the heart and, we hope, will also deeply affect the heart of our audience."
White film
And what knocks first ahead 24 hours in New YorkIt's the plastic beauty of the feature film. The four-thirds format carcan is particularly well suited to the film, which deploys a licked photograph. Nocturnal segments, razing lights, work on the granulosity of the skins, Vuk Lungulov-Klotz's camera offers the spectator a formally irreproachable film.
Even better, a meticulous work by the executives will allow the director to constantly make meaningful the image he creates, insulating or bringing his characters closer together. Between overcasting and exclusion in the margins of the image, it will explain the inter-personal relationships, more or less finely. And we may be there at the Achilles heel of this feature film.
Indeed, Lungulov-Klotz takes the net part-taken from the pure montration. "I'm aware that the physical and mental transformations that gender transition involves may seem extremely distant for some," he admits, and that's probably why he chooses to represent the body in transition in front of him, a choice without a doubt wise to de-smoking the issue with a potentially neophyte audience. The problem is that 24 hours in New York sometimes falls into the pure theoretical demonstration and forgets Feña, her main character...
This results in several redundant segments and a handful of passages that were forced to wait very long, which ended up snuggling a film whose tone and rhythm were rejoicing. If these passages are always borrowed from a welcome pedagogy, they unfortunately increase the viewing and merely support points that the feature film had already subtly insinuated of itself. And that's too bad...
Verdict?
24 a.m. in New York vaut largement le détour, ne serait-ce que pour faire un peu mieux comprendre la transidentité à son public. Pédagogique, certes parfois à l’excès, il a pour lui sa fraîcheur et son travail formel constamment minutieux et mémorable. Ajoutons encore que la prestation de Lio Mehiel est remarquable, et qu’on se réjouit de son rôle à venir dans In the Summers… Un film à rattraper d’ores et déjà sur support physique !
Data sheet
DVD Zone B (France)
Publisher: Blaq Out
Duration: 84 min
Release date: February 20, 2024
Video format : 576p/25 - 1.37
Soundtrack : Anglais Dolby Digital 5.1 (et 2.0)
Subtitles French
[…] courants qui peuvent émailler ce genre de long-métrage. C’était par exemple le cas de 24 heures à New York, un beau petit film sur la transidentité qui s’alourdissait pourtant d’un pan beaucoup […]