Fresh Kills

For her writing and directing debut, actress Jennifer Esposito blends the subjects of the two movies in which she most recently acted. Mob Town was about the Mafia, Somewhere in Queens was about a large Italian-American family in NYC, so naturally, Fresh Kills is about a large crime family who's just moved to Staten Island from Brooklyn. However, Esposito isn't particularly interested in the crime or the gangsters or the violence. While much of that exists across the decade or so in which the movie takes place (split into 1987, 1993, and 1997), it's relegated to background. We're pretty certain from jump that it's all taking place, confirmed by a key act one scene in a garage and reiterated a few times later on, but the movie's primary focus is on how the women fit into the picture.

By her reckoning, the answer to that is "not very well". How can they, when thrust into a world of machismo and luxury and outdated expectations of what it means to be a wife? Any suggestion of deviation from that cookie-cutter life is met with not only derision, but direct accusations of not caring about the family. To get married and have kids and become a housewife is a duty, and you should be honored to be given the privilege of a seat at the table in this beautiful home. Suggesting otherwise? You may as well have walked up to your mother and popped her in the mouth.

Our window into this world is Rose (Emily Bader), who dares to ponder aloud whether she'll want kids. She's an incredibly unassertive character, even beginning the film as a mute child (played by Anastasia Veronica Lee). Her desire seems to be to skirt by unnoticed in this world, and leave as small of an impact as possible. She eschews the big, brash personalities and aesthetics of the women all around her, emphasized further by Bader neither looking nor sounding like anyone else in the family. Her sister Connie (Odessa A’zion), on the other hand, is about as in your face and aggressive as they come. What starts as talking back as a kid (Taylor Madeline Hand) turns into brutally beating down a girl with her bare fists over a boy as a teenager. That is, we're presented with two possible reactions to being brought up in such an environment: Rose's decision to hide, and Connie's full embrace of it.

Of course, there are more than two options for how such experiences can shape you, which Esposito presents in the girls' mother Francine (Esposito herself) and their Aunt Christine (Annabella Sciorra). We don't know what the two women were like when they were younger, but you can easily see Rose turning into Christine: beaten down by life, clearly confined by the world in which she's found herself, and resigned to her situation. Hence why they share a close bond, although one that's strained by the suicide of her husband: when in and around the Mob, any death is worth your suspicion, which is bound to cause tension. Francine is a bit harder to place, as she's clearly proud of this family, and fiercely defensive of it, much like Connie. But she also seemingly wants nothing to do with her husband's life of crime, instead willing to turn a blind eye to benefit from his dealings - until it instigates a raid on their home. Francine is the main person looking to keep Rose "in line", to crush her dreams of independence and running away to Manhattan, even offering to share her tranquilizers in the aftermath of a fight into which Connie dragged her.

It's a shame that so much of that setup is squandered by Rose's extreme passivity. As our protagonist, it gives us little to grab on to, to hope for, to anticipate, to understand. It doesn't take long to grasp the forces which cause her to default to inaction, so that she continues doing nothing so long after shedding the excuse of childhood gets repetitive and boring. No even speaking up for herself means her life simply happens to her, and we strain to watch everyone else in the frame. It's super frustrating to watch her watching her own life, robbing herself of agency at every possible decision point. Every time we think she's about to zig or zag, she just timidly stays the course. While I imagine this may be part of the point, it still saps the movie of the propulsion provided by some of the others, spinning its wheels before events which are at all interesting finally involve Rose. This isn't a knock on Bader, by the way: I thought she did a good job, although she certainly wasn't spinning anything into gold.

A’zion, on the other hand, is absolutely electric. Sure, Connie is a lot more full of life on the page, but it's hard to overstate the gusto with which she hurls herself into the role. She feels so incredibly of this world, it's disconcerting. The style, the way she carries herself, her willingness to antagonize her father's errand boy Allie (Nicholas Cirillo). Admittedly, she contains a handful of Mafia women stereotypes: loud, brassy, wears excessive jewelry, such a strong New York accent that she's basically talking out of the side of her mouth, and more. But A'zion is able to assemble these traits into something that feels different, into a person who is born of the world but still feels at a remove, who can't quite escape it but refuses to act in the ways they want. She's rearing for a fight at any moment, ready to dive in with some real weighty punches to her enemy's face. Too energetic to stay on the sidelines, she gets involved with moving drugs for the family. Plus, we lots of her internal life and desires: it's just that they mostly involve staying in the neighborhood. Every inch of her performance conveys this, from her dress to her facial expressions to her relaxed, swaggering walk. She will not be pigeonholed, not by Rose, not by her mother, and certainly not by the audience.

The sum is a story that has a lot going on, but isn't effectively assembled it into anything satisfying or enlightening. The world is enjoyable enough, if you're into this sort of thing, but it's unlikely to speak to anyone outside that sphere. And given that it's an entry into the common genre of "Mafia story", it's likely to get buried in the cultural memory by stronger entries. I admire that Esposito decided to try something different after acting for nearly thirty years, and that she didn't cast herself as the star, setting her apart from many of her ilk. Unfortunately, this attempt is unlikely to leave much of a mark.