ARZE is the story of a family struggling to get by. Two sisters make pies which they deliver across the city. Because they don’t have a means of transport beyond their feet they are limited in what they can do. Needing a motor scooter, Arze steals her sister’s jewelry in order to pay for it. Things go sideways when the scooter is stolen. This sends Arze and her brother on a mad dash across the city.
This is a really good film that over comes it’s echoes of THE BICYCLE THIEVES by giving us great characters, an unfamiliar location and shadings not in the original. It’s so good on its own terms that I hated to even mention it except that I and everyone else I know covering Tribeca thought of the film as the riff on the earlier classic. By the time the film ends you will feel kind of dumb for making the connection.
What makes this film work is are the characters. We fall in with them at the start and we are willing to go anywhere with them. And we do go, across the city and into the lives f a family struggling to get by and find love. Because we care for them he are on the edge of out seats- waiting and hoping that everything turns out okay for them.
I’m going to be completely honest and other than the fact it was playing at Tribeca I didn’t have the film high on my dance card. If I missed it I wasn’t going to be too disappointed. Then a slot opened and I went into the film with plans on just filling time. And then the film started and I met the characters and I was carried away and into their lives. I wanted to see how things came out. The film became the best sort of Tribeca film – one I had no expectations for and one I can happily recommend to my friends who want to see a really good movie.
ARZE shines- recommended.
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