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The Climb
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Movies and pop songs love to counsel us that life is a journey, a slog along the path ahead … But how about a bicycle ride, climbing up a steep slope? At the start of The Climb, Mike tells his best friend Kyle that he has slept with the latter’s fiancée – and it won’t be the last time that this happens. Mike happens to be the debuting feature director, Michael Angelo Covino, and Kyle is played by Kyle Marvin (director of 80 for Brady [2023]) – and the two guys share script credit as well. Draw your own conclusions, right or wrong! As the years pass, Mike and Kyle go in different directions, sometimes (sort of) reuniting. As male pals, they are a classic odd couple: Mike is aggressive and reckless, while Kyle is passive and submissive; Mike is (as we say these days) toxic, but Kyle really needs to assert himself more. Spinning around them are the ordinary, inevitable problems of love, death, divorce, family and emotional connection. The narrative is set into episodic chapters. Combining the gentle (rather than broadly physical or gag-based) comical forms of Pierre Étaix, P.T. Anderson, Luc Moullet, Tyler Taormina and many a Mumblecore movie, Covino cleverly stages most of his film in long takes that rove from character to character and from one point in space to another – taking in both the core of an event and its periphery. Thus, not only the hysterical, key participants, but also the various, bewildered observers. (There’s a stylistic affinity here with Rob Tregenza’s Talking to Strangers [1988].) Frequently very funny, well-acted (Judith Godrèche is among the cast) and punctuated with several fine musical interludes, this is a buddy-story that deftly veers between cringe-inducing laughter and despair. The Climb is among the large slate of movies made everywhere that were greatly disadvantaged, distribution & exhibition-wise, by the onset of the global pandemic in 2020. It’s worth seeking out. © Adrian Martin 24 September 2019 |
