A well thought out and constructed film, with amazingly simple elements and story, in which two men live a short escapade for a couple of days, but they separate in the same way as their fleeting first encounter in search of impersonal sex.
An early example of observational cinema, «The Delta» de-emphasizes the traditional resources of drama and builds the profile of its two characters through a neat description of actions and precise reduction of words. On the one hand, Lincoln, a white boy from Memphis, who appears to lead a normal life; on the other, "John", a dark-skinned Vietnamese émigré, who hides a murky side beneath his apparent life on the fringes of social conventions. In the middle, a city, a family, customs, relationships, the night, eroticism, drugs, the migrant subculture, and a fortuitous escape in search of an inconsistent freedom.
Director Ira Sachs (born in Memphis) executed the film with a solid hand, based on situations he must know too well, to the point that his frequent moments of naturalism disarm and evoke the best moments of fiction cinema with ethnographic features, thanks to the highly effective performances by Shayne Gray and Thang Chan.
The narrative strategy and, above all, a "resolution" in which nothing is resolved, because everyone continues to live, reminded me that, 12 years later, Lucrecia Martel did something similar in «La mujer sin cabeza» and everyone applauded and covered the film with awards.
Although Ira Sachs became a prestigious filmmaker, it is surprising how this 1996 film has been practically buried, because its most outstanding features were already common in the best independent and contemplative North American cinema of the late twentieth century. Highly recommended for those who admire films that were at the vanguard when released, exorcised from the Aristotelian model.
An early example of observational cinema, «The Delta» de-emphasizes the traditional resources of drama and builds the profile of its two characters through a neat description of actions and precise reduction of words. On the one hand, Lincoln, a white boy from Memphis, who appears to lead a normal life; on the other, "John", a dark-skinned Vietnamese émigré, who hides a murky side beneath his apparent life on the fringes of social conventions. In the middle, a city, a family, customs, relationships, the night, eroticism, drugs, the migrant subculture, and a fortuitous escape in search of an inconsistent freedom.
Director Ira Sachs (born in Memphis) executed the film with a solid hand, based on situations he must know too well, to the point that his frequent moments of naturalism disarm and evoke the best moments of fiction cinema with ethnographic features, thanks to the highly effective performances by Shayne Gray and Thang Chan.
The narrative strategy and, above all, a "resolution" in which nothing is resolved, because everyone continues to live, reminded me that, 12 years later, Lucrecia Martel did something similar in «La mujer sin cabeza» and everyone applauded and covered the film with awards.
Although Ira Sachs became a prestigious filmmaker, it is surprising how this 1996 film has been practically buried, because its most outstanding features were already common in the best independent and contemplative North American cinema of the late twentieth century. Highly recommended for those who admire films that were at the vanguard when released, exorcised from the Aristotelian model.