Returns Policy
If you are unhappy with your purchase, you can return it to us within 14 days. More details
MovieMail's Review
First he doesn’t make a film for a decade and then two come along in short succession! Simon Kinnear immerses himself in this highly personal meditation on family and art from Francis Ford Coppola.
2007’s Youth Without Youth was Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in a decade. Tetro arrives in relatively rapid succession, suggesting that the septuagenarian director has rediscovered his filmmaking fire.
Riffing on Pedro Almodovar, Five Easy Pieces and Coppola’s own Rumble Fish, it charts the stormy reunion when Bennie Tetrocini (promising newcomer Alden Ehrenreich) finds his long-lost brother Angelo, aka Tetro (Vincent Gallo), living in bohemian exile in Buenos Aires.
Emotionally damaged by their callous maestro father (Klaus Maria Brandeur), Tetro alternates between sullen martyrdom and volcanic rage – typecasting for Gallo, maybe, but also his most vital presence since Buffalo '66.
For Coppola, too, it’s a revival. In outline, this highly personal meditation on family and art is an elder statesman’s film, intimate and elegiac. But the real pleasure is seeing Coppola cut loose with a youngster’s brio and bravura.
Backed by Walter Murch’s musical editing, Coppola delivers rhapsodic segues from gorgeous monochrome into exuberant colour, and enchanting ballet fantasies modelled on Powell and Pressburger. This might be a work in a minor key, but it’s far from a minor work.
'Mihai Malaimare, Jr.: The Cinematography' Featurette
'Osvaldo Golijov: Music Born From The Film' Featurette
Cast of Characters.
Film Description
A semi-autobiographical drama written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Tetro is both a homage to the melodramatic classics of the 1950s as well as a rich modern day story about a family torn apart by deep rivalries, secrets and betrayals.
Set in Buenos Aires, it tells the story of frustrated writer Tetro (Vincent Gallo), who is living in a state of melancholic creative exile with his girlfriend Miranda (Maribel Verdu) when he receives an unexpected visit from his long-distant younger brother Bennie. Bennie's visit stirs up a complex mixture of memories and emotions as the two brothers struggle to come to terms with the long shadow cast by their father, a successful composer, and find a way to reconnect with one another.
