Lymelife (2008)

[lsanderson]

Rory Culkin and Emma Roberts as neighbors in Derick Martini’s “Lymelife.”
April 8, 2009
Ticks, Ennui and (Sigh) the Dream Girl Next Door
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: April 8, 2009

Sometime late in “Lymelife” the director Derick Martini cuts to a close-up of a weeping teenager with a shot so tightly framed you can see the glistening curves of the tears clinging to the boy’s eyelashes. It’s an unexpectedly moving image, a reminder that the close-up, in its ability to bring us near to the poetry of the human face, remains one of cinema’s most potent if often squandered techniques. (Television has largely helped us forget just how potent.) Those tears transform the teenage character, Scott Bartlett (Rory Culkin): they briefly strip away the clichés encrusting him and offer us a glimpse of the real. More