‘Mountains’ Review: Miami Gentrification Drama Starts as Slice-of-Life but Grows Stilted
variety.comJ. Kim Murphy There are a lot of jobs in America that make the world a worse place to live. Most people keep working those jobs.
Filmmaker Monica Sorelle looks to explain how that bitter pill gets swallowed in her debut feature “Mountains,” which follows Xavier (Atibon Nazaire), a blue-collar Haitian American who becomes complicit in gentrifying his own neighborhood.
After a low-key festival run, the Tribeca discovery is getting a limited opening in New York and L.A., but not before a theatrical bow in Miami — the film’s setting and Sorelle’s birthplace.
That hometown pride is evident in “Mountains,” which carries an undeniable veracity and compassion. Its narrative proves less insightful, however: too wary to crack into its protagonist’s troubled psyche, softening the film’s worthwhile political anxieties into sympathetic messaging that seems ho-hum and predetermined.
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