We who review movies regularly know how to spot red flags, and not even Baruch Spinoza deploying all his view-from-nowhere skills could say Fresh Kills didn’t look like trouble. This is a mafia drama, the most played-out of all genres, particularly for independent films, and it was written and directed by an actor known mostly from cop shows. Lastly, it debuted a year ago at the Tribeca Film Festival, which from time to time does launch good projects, but also unleashes plenty of god-awful mafia dramas written and directed by people you know from cop shows.
But Fresh Kills proves we must always give everything a fair shake. Jennifer Esposito’s debut feature isn’t a mere “not bad"—it’s a stone-cold “this is great” success. The actress (from Blue Bloods, NCIS, and a hundred other things) is a major directing talent who, if the world were a righteous place, would have offers from every studio to create intelligent and finely observed movies for adults from now until the end of time. She’s also in the damn thing, as the mother of two very different sisters (Emily Bader and Odessa A’zion) navigating their unusual living conditions from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s.
Their environment is the rather dramatically named real neighborhood Fresh Kills (“kill” being Dutch for “stream”) in Staten Island.
Thanks to The Sopranos, everyone knows about North Jersey Italian-American culture. But more hardcore (even more than the Nassau/Suffolk county lines in Long Island) is New York City’s seldom-discussed fifth borough, Staten Island, a liminal space of urban and suburban living that for decades smelled like the rotten flatulence of a dying rhinoceros.
It’s no joke. For a great long time, Staten Island’s largest claim to fame was the Fresh Kills landfill, where the garbage of the most important city in the world was sent to rot. Growing up as I did in New Jersey, my family would often take car trips to Queens or Long Island. The faster route was through Staten Island, but my mother, sister, and I would rebel against my father’s shortcut because the putrid sulfur scent was so bad that we’d prefer to sit in traffic and drive via the Lincoln Tunnel and Manhattan when we visited Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Mike.
My point is that when the stench of Fresh Kills makes its first appearance just a few minutes into Esposito’s movie, I knew I was in safe hands. She knows it because she lived it, and everything about this movie—from the hairstyles to the sofas to the music coming out of the cars (like “Lookout Weekend” by Debbie Deb)—is absolutely right.
More exciting than this verisimilitude is her deceptively simple way of telling a mob tale. This is a look at the lifestyle from the inside, from those who do all they can to deny the reality of what, exactly, is the family business. Some are more clueless than others—and it’s the shy and pure-hearted Rose (Bender) slowly having her awakening that is the spine of the picture.
I won’t get into the details about Dad (Domenick Lombardozzi, always terrific) or Aunt Chris (Sopranos alum Annabella Sciorra) or cousin Allie (Nicholas Cirillo) and the various crosses and double-crosses, because the specific plot points aren’t important. We see only what Rose sees, so that means no backroom discussions about who is getting whacked or where the men are going on their “business trips.” Indeed, Lombardozzi and his big warm smile comes across like father of the year, especially when gifting Connie (A’zion) with a car for her birthday.
Rose’s guard finally comes up when Dad gives the sisters a bakery to run as a present. She’s an independent thinker and wouldn’t mind having an legitimate job—she dreams of being an assistant to Sally Jessy Raphael, which is an amazing flourish on Esposito’s part—but Connie accepts the keys with a big “ohmyGAWWWWD” without worrying for a minute that she has no idea how to actually run a business.
Naturally, the bakery is a front for whatever bad stuff is happening in the basement. But Fresh Kills has the generosity of spirit to let the audience fill in the gaps. There are cars that follow the girls around, but we never cut to their interiors. We’ve all seen that movie before, even if Rose and Connie haven’t.
By the end, some blood does get spilled, and again Esposito subverts expectations. The kills of Fresh Kills aren’t elaborate. They happen with little warning and with great impact. Every decision she makes is the right one.
Perhaps my praise for this project is a little elevated because my expectations were low, but this really is a gem of a small picture. From the Italian rainbow cookies to the shout-out to the Wilfred Beauty Academy, the details in Fresh Kills are remarkable, but it wouldn’t mean much without great performances. A’zion has the showier role with the rich accent and hothead attitude, but Bader, exuding a young Pam Dawber/Margot Kidder era-appropriate appeal, is quietly mesmerizing as the eyes and ears on this unbelievable world. The Fresh Kills landfill was finally closed in 2001, and the area doesn’t stink so bad anymore. How many families like this still exist, however, is unknown.
