Princess Of The Row: A Familiar, Yet Effective Coming-Of-Age Story
Princess Of The Row is the narrative feature film debut from Van Maximilian Carlson, who also co-wrote the screenplay with newcomer A. Shawn Austin. Familiar, yet effective, and a bit tonally mixed up, Princess Of The Row blends the starkness of reality with light fantasy elements with a fair degree of success, shining a light on some important topics while tugging the heart strings along the way.
The inspiring tale of a runaway foster child named Alicia (Tayler Buck) who will stop at nothing to live with the only family she knows: her homeless, mentally-ill veteran father (Edi Gathegi) who lives on the streets of LA's skid row.
If you combine Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace with Ben Zeitlin’s Beasts Of The Southern Wild, replace the lush wilderness of their surroundings with the sunny, impoverished streets of Los Angeles, and filter it through the compassionate, outsider-centric lens of Sean Baker, you’d have something close to Van Maximilian Carlson’s Princess Of The Row. Although, it should be noted that Carlson can’t quite reach the heights — or depths — of those other films or filmmakers; there’s some tonal wobble and awkward detours that keep it from soaring as high as it should. However, with the aide of Taylor Buck (who does most of the heavy lifting as Alicia), Carlson is able to create a compelling emotional core that should keep most viewers invested, despite its familiarity.
Speckled with soft splashes of poetic whimsy and fantasy, Princess Of The Row combines the starkness of reality with the hopeful, yet delusional lies we tell ourselves until the reality becomes too big to ignore. When we meet Alicia, a creative 12-year-old who’s spent most of her life bouncing around the foster care system, she’s still trying to keep the door closed on reality. Her father, Bo, a veteran suffering from extreme PTSD he received from a brain injury during a tour in Iraq, is homeless on L.A.’s Skid Row, and his condition continues to fall more and more into instability.
Alicia frequently ditches school to go sit with her father in his tent as he mutters incomprehensible gibberish, self-sabotaging foster opportunity after foster opportunity just to stay near him. Much of the time, he hardly seems to recognize Alicia at all; however, through brief moments of lucidity, we see a tenderness between the pair, which makes us understand why Alicia refuses to let him go. However, when she discovers that her new foster parents, a wealthy couple played by Jenny Gago and Martin Sheen, live ten hours away from downtown Los Angeles, she reaches a crossroad. Determined to stay by her father’s side, she swipes some petty cash from her well-to-do fosters and embarks on runaway road trip in hopes of finding a better life.
As you can imagine, it’s not so easy for a little girl to manage on her own with limited funds and her father’s deadweight. Luckily, she has many people out there, like Magdalene Rodriguez (Ana Ortiz) from social services, who genuinely want to lend a helping hand; however, there are others that aren’t so well intentioned. Despite the harsh streaks of reality, Princess Of The Row maintains a relatively light tone, but there’s one narrative detour involving a child-trafficking ring that tilts the scale in ways that don’t quite cohere. Although this is a risk that a homeless person may face, this sharp, yet brief veer into dark, exploitation terrain is largely inconsistent with the rest of the film.
Dark detours aside, there’s joy to be had in Alicia’s journey; however, much of it feels like filler that ultimately leads her back to the same crossroad she found herself at before. After all, reality can only be avoided for so long before it crashes like a crested wave… While the choice Alicia makes is a predictable one, there’s emotional resonance to the whole runaway expedition that makes it worthwhile — even though you may find yourself wishing you were watching one of the two films it’s essentially a hybrid of instead.
Recommendation: If you like heartwarming — and breaking — coming-of-age stories that shine a light on the margins of society, definitely give Princess Of The Row a day in court.
Rating: 3 carousel unicorns outta 5.
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