Philadelphia Film Festival 2007 (part 2)

Continued from Part I

For Saturday night’s selection, we decided to see Fay Grim. The name may be instantly familiar to those who have seen HAL HARTLEY’s 1998 masterpiece Henry Fool. Fay (played by PARKER POSEY both in Henry Fool and in this unofficial sequel) is Henry’s wife and the brother of Simon Grim (once again played by JAMES URBANIAK), a former garbageman turned acclaimed outsider poet who won the Nobel Prize, all because he was inspired to write poetry by Henry, an outsider who comes to town and changes a family’s life forever.

If all of this sounds far-fetched, it’s absolutely nothing compared to this sequel. Set once again in Woodside, Queens, it picks up the story 8 years later. Simon is in prison while Fay and Henry haven’t seen each other in years as Henry fled years earlier. Where did he go? What happens in the end? Well of course I can’t tell you that exactly, but let’s just say it involves the C.I.A., Henry’s more than sordid past and a series of notebooks that could compromise the security of the United States.

Posey is, as usual, wonderful as Fay, even when she’s forced to stretch her character as she is in this film. THOMAS JAY RYAN is also magnificent as Henry, though he doesn’t appear until about halfway through the film. The plot is a bit hard-to-follow and convoluted at times and as such, the film is far from perfect. However, it’s an enjoyable and certainly imaginative sequel to one of the late ‘90s finest examples of independent film.