LA Film Fest Day 2: The New Year

Director Brett Haley's debut film wins us over with simple, good storytelling and relatable characters

By Aireka Muse
Published: June 20th, 2010 | 3:45pm

A throwback to past quarter-life crisis favorites like Reality Bites or Garden State, The New Year explores the silent confusion of being in your twenties. You're too old to not care about happens next in life, but still too young to really stress out about it. So you wait—for life to figure itself out or for something grand to happen that pushes you to really make a decision.

This film begins two years after Sunny (Trieste Kelly Dunn), a witty and remarkably intelligent young woman, left college to return to her small suburban hometown of Pensacola, Florida to spend time with her father (Marc Peterson) who was diagnosed with cancer. When Sunny takes up as the local bowling alley's shoe gal, her life is on pause and she knows it. Even her call-it-like-it-is best friend Amy (Linda Lee McBride) has a baby and gets engaged.

Sunny's real dilemma is that life is fine. Her father isn't great, but he's stable, and her relationship with teddy-bear boyfriend Neal (Kevin Wheatley) is nothing to complain about. So she sails along—until Isaac (Ryan Hunter), Sunny's high school rival, returns to town for the holidays. Isaac, an aspiring comedian living in New York City, is living the life that Sunny—a once prolific writer—always dreamed of. His mere presence gets to Sunny, and before she knows it, nothing makes sense.

As Sunny, the gorgeous Dunn shines, handling the duality of a conflicted young woman who works hard to maintain her "everything is okay" facade with ease. She easily conveys the character's confusion and justified ambivalence with grace and subtlety. We understand how Sunny becomes truly interested in two men, and also clearly relate to her love-hate relationship for her hometown. And while the love triangle serves as the main storyline, The New Year is really about the love story between a daughter and her father. Haley and his co-writer Elizabeth Kennedy cast the father-daughter relationship in a refreshing light with these two characters, both at opposite ends of the spectrum, who are equally fraught with discovering what life is really all about.

It's the no-frills approach that makes The New Year a gem. No fancy camera angles, noover-the-top dialogue—just empathetic characters and a relatable story. It's basic filmmaking at its best: a good script, promising director, and a talented lead.

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The New Year is currently playing at the Los Angeles Film Festival

June 18th @ 10:15pm; June 22nd @ 4:45pm; June 23rd @ 7:30pm