American Potato Dreams – Film Newspaper

Director Wes Hurley, after a short film and a documentary on virtual reality, makes with American potato dreams Now also a full movie about him coming to America as the gay son of a Russian bride by mail.

That’s a lot? No, this migration remains an interesting story and there is a good chance the Dutch public may not have seen the first two. short small potatoes (2017) made a big impression during the SXSW Film Festival in Austin but was not shown in the Netherlands and Virtual Reality-Installations Potato dreams (2017) Briefly presented during the IDFA. So Hurley – who once lived his life as Vasily Nomenko – grew up in Vladivostok during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and then moved into the home of an American religious fanatic that would be new to most people.

American potato dreams Interestingly divided into two parts. The first is the poor youth of Vasily (the nickname Potato) in the stifling, gray communist empire on its last legs. The only bright spot is the American films that he dreams about at night. star WarsAnd the Total RecallAnd the Pretty woman. Vasily (Hirch Powers) complains at school: “In American films, the good guys always win, in Russia the bad guys.” His single mother Lena (Sera Barbieri) also noticed this and decided to register as a mail-order bride to American men. Hoping for a better life.

This Russian part is set in a theater-like setting that, according to Hurley, refers to American sitcoms, but has a lot to do with the work of theater directors such as Derek Jarman and Pedro Almodovar. It is no coincidence, that the greats of gay cinema, because Vasily, as his impudent grandmother Tamara (Lea DeLaria), called him ‘sensitive’. For himself, the light really shines when he has his first sexual experience thanks to Jean-Claude Van Damme’s lubricated body.

In America, the film changes its style and actors: bright colors and a graceful camera match the amazement of mother and son (now played by Maria C. Kaminska and Tyler Pocock) as they move freely and playfully through their new hometown of Seattle. But the fun quickly fades when stepfather John (Dan Luria) turns out to be a religious tyrant. Will Vasily return soon because of his orientation? After all, it’s a classic Greg Araki movie live end (1992) causing an unexpected breakthrough in the situation. It creates a strange twist in the story, which you as a viewer have to go along with – but it actually happened in reality.