DCist’s daily roundup of a number of films playing tomorrow at the AFI/Discovery Channel Silverdocs festival.
Nicole N. Horanyi’s ‘The Devilles’The Devilles is a classic story of boy meets girl. Boy (Shawn Geary) is an 80s-style punk rocker and Girl (Teri Lee Geary) is a 50s-style burlesque dancer who bears a resemblance to Marilyn Monroe. We meet Shawn and Teri twenty-five years into their relationship, which has produced three kids and a shared love of maintaining the images of their youth. Teri hides behind a wig and a perpetual coat of makeup and teaches provocative dance classes to soccer moms, while Shawn practices with his punk band, Standard and Poor, in the basement.
While everything appears fine on the surface, one perm-related disagreement in the middle of a dinner party sends the couple’s world into a grating shouting match of accusations. It’s at this point that The Devilles completely goes off the rails, as there is no established reason to suspect that Shawn or Teri could be into anything other than proving how cool they are. The film devolves into predictable family melodrama, redeemed slightly by Shawn’s reflection on his first meeting with Teri, reminding him why he fell in love with her in the first place.
The main problem with The Devilles is that, while billed as a documentary, everything about the film is staged. The Gearys are real people, as evidenced here, but they’re acting. This isn’t a glimpse into their family so much as an opportunity for the family to play Movie. The cinematography is overwrought, especially during Teri’s dance routines and the numerous pensive interludes. The score makes the slow scenes drag even more, and the use of Depeche Mode’s “Behind the Wheel” during a drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is unimaginatively literal.
View the trailer
Premieres tomorrow at 9 p.m. in the Discovery HD Theater, and screens again on Saturday at 10:30 p.m. in the AFI Silver Theater 1.
