Searching for Paradise

D: Myra Paci; with Chris Noth, Susan May Pratt, Jeremy Davies, John Pierson, Laila Robins, Josef Somer.

Competition Film

Writer-director Myra Paci makes a strong feature filmmaking debut with this understated story about a recent college graduate who deals with her father’s death by seeking out the movie star (Noth) with whom she has become obsessed. Armed with only her mini-DV cam, some vague aspirations of getting into filmmaking, and a burning anger caused by her post-mortem discovery of her father’s extramarital affair, Gilda Mattei (Pratt) heads to New York to pursue her dreams. Confabulating impressions of her father and the movie star, Gilda adopts the identity of her father’s mistress, meets her idol, and discovers that images are merely slippery shards of half-truths. Relative newcomer Pratt delivers a confident performance in this film bolstered by an array of good work.

This article appears in October 18 • 2002.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.