Photo: Kim Massee's Cowboy Angels
Director Kim Massee's Cowboy Angels is a road movie without a context—except, that is, for the overruling cliché of the genre that insists on seeing a cute child riding in a car for extended periods of time with a grouchy adult, usually on a road to nowhere but one that almost always ends in contentment. Massee tweaks this formula somewhat but seems resistant to emotional clarity. When Pablo's mother leaves for destinations unknown, possibly never to come back, the young boy bribes a complete stranger, Louis (Thierry Levaret), to take him to Spain in order to look for his biological father. The title of the film is a double-edged pretense, pointing both to a curious western mystique that is really only apparent in the harmonica drone that persistently lingers on the soundtrack, and the idea that Pablo (Diego Mestanza) and Louis are wandering souls that were probably meant to find each other. Ed Gonzalez
Director Kim Massee's Cowboy Angels is a road movie without a context—except, that is, for the overruling cliché of the genre that insists on seeing a cute child riding in a car for extended periods of time with a grouchy adult, usually on a road to nowhere but one that almost always ends in contentment. Massee tweaks this formula somewhat but seems resistant to emotional clarity. When Pablo's mother leaves for destinations unknown, possibly never to come back, the young boy bribes a complete stranger, Louis (Thierry Levaret), to take him to Spain in order to look for his biological father. The title of the film is a double-edged pretense, pointing both to a curious western mystique that is really only apparent in the harmonica drone that persistently lingers on the soundtrack, and the idea that Pablo (Diego Mestanza) and Louis are wandering souls that were probably meant to find each other. Ed Gonzalez
