NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2022 (April 20-May 1, 2022)

[Chris Knipp]

RICKY D'AMBROSE: THE CATHEDRAL (2021)



TRAILER

The author runs through his life age one to nineteen as a series of tableaux

"What makes the fabric of our upbringing? The memories we’ll reflect on after those years have passed are often not what we may hold onto in a moment filtered and refracted through a thousand more experiences. Following his hour-long debut feature Notes on an Appearance, Ricky D’Ambrose’s Bressonian style continues with The Cathedral, a less intellectually rigorous outing that still impresses with its sense of personal significance, recreating slivers of a life experience over some two decades to form a vivid recollection of both the fracturing of a family and the United States at large. It’s an ambitious undertaking for an 87-minute film, and while this lofty aim can result in a few passages striking a bit broad, one comes away admiring D’Ambrose’s meticulously committed approach to storytelling." Jordan Raup, The Film Stage

"If we can even trust our own memories (and science says we can’t), it’s far more likely that what we retain from our childhoods is random and unremarkable, an episode of an old TV show we once watched rather than a trip to Disney World. Much like we remember slights more than compliments, so too do negative events remain fresh in our minds far more than the good times. Ricky D’Ambrose’s The Cathedral is essentially a brain dump of these bits and pieces of his life, committed to film. It’s not a 'slice of life' movie, exactly, more like a collage that would benefit from some filling in of a few blank spaces." - Raup.

"As someone who grew up in the 80s, I appreciate the touches of realism, like Richard’s bland, pastel living room, which looks like it came directly out of a Polaroid circa 1988. I appreciate D'Ambrose’s fascination with the ordinary, like when he holds a shot on a pair of shoes, or a relative's bejeweled hands. The Cathedral is an interesting concept, and a fresh departure from the usual Wonder Years narrative. But its insistence on depicting moments without emotion feels, in the end, a little empty." - Gena Radcliffe, The Spool.

The Cathedral, 87 m,ins., debuted Venice, showed at Sundance, Rotterdam, several others and included in Apr. 2022's New Directors/New Films.