(2004) Movie of David Duchovny - director, screenwriter, and actor - has the feel of a fond, sentimental reminiscence of a place and time. In Paris, returning home on his bicycle late at night on his son's thirteenth birthday, Tom Warshaw (Duchovny), a successful artist, begins to explain to his wife Coralie (Magali Amadei), in an upstairs window, as neighbors complain of the noise, where he's been.

Unlocking his past, returning to New York City in 1973 when he was almost 13, living with his mother (Téa Leoni), a nurse who smokes cigarettes and widow of a man who died of cancer a year earlier, Tommy (Anton Yelchin) sleeps beneath her bed; attends St Andrews, an all-boys school; and makes deliveries for Simone's deli with his buddy Pappass (Robin Williams), the school's retarded assistant janitor.

Simone lets them kiss her crucifix, hanging between her cleavage; Tommy tells a customer the meat is "ground Charles"; a female client opens her purse for a tip between her thighs. With Pappass posing as his father, the boy and the man-child go to R-rated movies.

Beneath the women's house of detention where Tommy keeps his money box hidden (saving up to purchase the "beautiful green lady" bicycle displayed in a shop window), Tommy makes acquaintance with "Lady" (Erykah Badu), held in solitary confinement, whom he can't see but who watches him with a broken piece of mirror, asking him to buy her a "dime bag" of weed.

In French class, Tommy, a gifted student striving toward a college scholarship, teases his teacher with "boner" and "hap-penis" for "bonheur" as she urges the class to "focus." During Rev Duncan's (Frank Langella) class (renamed Ethics from its former title Bible Study), Tommy doodles cartoons on pages of Scripture as the boys toss balled-up pages out the window where Pappass collects them below.

Chided about his being sweet on a girl from the Catholic all-girls school, Tommy delivers a crude comment about Melissa Logan (Zelda Williams): "flat as a board and easy to screw." When the word gets out, the girls taunt Tommy as having "small balls." Making a delivery uptown to an exclusive highrise, Tommy and Pappass find themselves in Melissa's home; ignoring Pappass's inappropriate remarks, Melissa asks Tommy to come to the Sunday dance.

Taking a dance lesson on the sidewalk with a pole from Lady's instructions, Tommy then buys an orange outfit for the occasion, though he says to Melissa: "I'm not sure I can dance and talk at the same time." Jealous of Tommy's new attraction, Pappass, whose father blames his mentally deficient son for his wife's death, breaks the shop's glass to steal the bike and then takes Tommy's money box with all the coins carefully wrapped to the river: "the change made everything change."

Spoiler alert.

An onrush of melodrama washes over the carefully constructed sandcastles: Taking responsibility for the theft, Tommy gets expelled, losing his chance for a scholarship; his mother, after overdosing on sedatives, lapses into a coma; and Melissa refuses to see him. Having nowhere else to go, Tommy asks Lady for her name and advice: Bernadette Odelia, guilty of murdering her husband in his sleep, so "Run!"

This coming-of-age story of life's alterations is entertaining for its word play and incidents during innocence. Eleven years later, unbeknownst yet to Tommy in France, Pappass finds out he's no longer retarded, having become mentally handicapped; and the House of D has been torn down, replaced by a garden and library.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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