Finding North
(1998)
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Rhonda Portelli (Wendy Makkena, SISTER ACT) a big-haired girl from Brooklyn, finds Travis (John Benjamin Hickey, LOVE! VALOUR! COMPASSION!) naked and about to take his life by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. He doesn't jump and she believes she's found her ideal man, though she doesn't realise he's gay. These two self-confessed misfits take a trip to Texas and help each other through their respective troubles and issues in this madcap road movie. |
Essentially a lower-octane, gender-bending version of Forces of Nature, Tanya Wexler's feature debut takes an off-the-beaten-track approach to the road movie. Mixing gentle character comedy with life-affirming revelation, it features John Benjamin Hickey as a man with a mission — a Texan quest set by his dead lover — who is joined by Wendy Makkena as a just-sacked, thirtysomething Brooklynite desperate to escape the clutches of her shrewish Jewish mother. Played to the pleasingly melancholic strains of a country soundtrack, the film tackles the Aids issue with sensitivity rather than insistence, and avoids unnecessary sentimentality. But the central relationship feels forced, with the sparky Makkena getting too little response from Hickey's self-pitying stuffed shirt.