Last year’s Tribeca Film Festival was abuzz over Detachment, a new film directed by Tony Kaye and starring Adrien Brody. Kay broke ground with American History X and took an impartial look at abortion in the documentary Lake of Fire. He heads back to the classroom in this feature narrative–headed for a March release–about an emotionally-distant substitute teacher in a struggling high-school.

From the onset, it is clear that Henry Barthes (Brody) does not lack empathy, but it is his inability to establish an emotional connection that hinders his ability to improve the lives of the children that intersect with his life. He encounters a homeless teenage prostitute on a bus whom he eventually takes in. Their connection evolves into a father-and-daughter dynamic but Henry still struggles with emotional bonding, recalling the tragic death of his mother through flashbacks.

Brody is at his best since The Pianist and newcomer Sami Gayle, who plays Erica, gives the most astonishing performance of a teenage prostitute since Jody Foster in Taxi Driver. It isn’t the genius of these two actors alone; Marcia Gay-Harden, Blythe Daner, James Caan (he plays a riotous teacher who copes through medication), Christina Hendricks and Lucy Liu carry their weight forward through the film. This is refreshing considering that so many films that cram so much star power into a film are often horrendous.

Kaye’s inclination for overdramatizing is what impairs it the film. Apparently, this high-school is the only one in the world where absolutely no parents show up on parent-teacher day. Although it is unsurprising that some high-schools in America are near irredeemable, Kayes insists that they are completely forsaken. The entire tangent with the high-school is not nearly as interesting or dynamic as the relationship with Erica, which was the only relationship that seemed the least bit plausible. Still the film is gut-wrenchingly raw and emotional. The final scene of the film reveals a windswept, macabre classroom that would frighten Edgar Allen Poe–by itself far more compelling than the rest of the film.

COMING OUT March 16, 2012 (Tribeca Features)

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