Arts News

Film Festival preview – A coming of age that got up and went

Leonard Hill Films

By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews

Here’s a synopsis: Uptight, repressed Valley girl spends some time in the city, learns about herself, and finds love.
Deb Dorfman lives with her uptight, depressed, not-so-recently widowed father. He spouts a lot of Yiddish and complains a lot — that’s how we know they’re Jewish. She works for her brother, a lying, sex-addicted worm who spends more time on the golf course than in the office.
So when her brother’s best friend, the object of Deb’s desire, asks her to spend four days cat sitting at his gorgeous new loft in a gentrified industrial district downtown, she jumps at the chance — not to escape the 1980s, where she apparently lives, but to unpack all of his stuff and decorate for him. Because she loves him. And he loves her, in that “luvs ya” kind of way, despite the fact that he’s good looking and an international journalist and hangs out with models.
But Deb can’t stand the sight of herself, let alone utter a complete sentence in his presence. And she thinks the models are prostitutes because they’re models. And she lives with her father. It doesn’t sound like the makings of true love, but stranger things have happened. Just not in L.A.
So the models give Deb a Cyndi Lauper makeover, which, sadly, is an improvement. She argues with the neighbor, an artist, apparently the only other person who lives in the building, then spends a day on the town with him to see the real L.A. Meanwhile, Deb parked Dad at her brother’s mansion, but big brother can’t handle it. So Dad moves downtown, too. Comedy ensues. So does romance. Did I mention this takes place over four days? You can see where this is going. I’ll stop before we get there.