NEW YORK MOVIE JOURNAL (Dec. 2015-Jan. 2016)

[Chris Knipp]

YOSEMITE (Gabrielle Demeestere 2015). Another first-time director's collaboration with James Franco on some of his short stories, this about ten-year-old boys. Demeestere and Franco met at NYU film school and worked out the idea of adapting two of his stories, and she added a third intertwining characters and winding up episodes a bit. Franco plays the father in the first story, set in the eponymous park. This is more slight than the excellent Palo Alto by Gia Coppola, but well done in its way and precise in every detail of age, milieu and period--including primitive video games and primordial internet. One trouble is that the pedophile young man (Henry Hopper) who invites home one of the boys -- a repeated situation Demeestere keeps in suspension -- is more disturbing than anything else and so tends to overwhelm the film with the effect of making every relationship by extension also seem (unnecessarily) potentially inappropriate or weird. Another is how sketchy and episodic it all is; a third that, as treated here, without much plot, ten-year-old boys don't seem all that interesting or distinguishable from each other. But Demeestere works really well with the boys, and they are very natural. There are many nice moments. Watched at the first theatrical showing of the film before a friendly audience including friends and relatives, among others, and followed by a Q&A with the director. At IFC Center, New Year's Day 2016.