Bottled Up Finds Big Laughs Close to Home at RIIFF

After years of Rhode Island moviegoers hearing characters talk about traffic jams on Sunset and flights leaving JFK, the audience at RIIFF’s Friday night’s screening of Bottled Up cheered for mentions of Wickenden Street, Wayland Square, and Barrington. Written, directed, and starring Victor Pigasse, the film had its world premiere at Providence’s Avon Cinema as part of the 44th annual Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF). Pigasse plays Simon, a charming if slightly immature man who still lives with his mother in a giant, labyrinthine house in Providence. He’s invited his long-time work crush to dinner with plans to confess his love, but nothing goes as planned, and a steady stream of unexpected guests, and wild miscommunications, turn a night of romance into a rip-roaring comedy that had the audience in stitches.

In many ways, Pigasse has succeeded in making a modern day Jerry Lewis film. I understand critical reception to Jerry is mixed in some circles, but as someone who believes Mr. Lewis to be one of the finest filmmakers America has produced, I mean this as the highest compliment I can give. It’s a delight to watch Pigasse’s expressive face cycle through big emotions as he runs around the giant house or struggles to uncork a bottle of wine. With his bright red sweater, it’s almost as if Jerry’s character from The Ladies Man found himself in the house from Clue, holding together the ever growing cast of characters and near-infinite number of rooms with his own brand of energetic earnestness.

What elevates this film as more than just the manic good time described above (though, frankly, that alone is worth the price of a ticket) is the respect it has for the cast, treating each of them with a great deal of empathy instead of reducing them into cartoons. One of the numerous interweaving miscommunications that make up the film’s plot is Tom (Joshua David Scarlett)’s mistaken belief that Simon was about to confess his love to him. Pigasse as writer/director gives Scarlett enough space in the script and on set to craft a believable portrayal of a man ready to be vulnerable and explore his feelings with the wide-eyed manchild at the film’s center. Tom being in love with Simon itself is never the joke, it’s Scarlett’s commitment to maintaining an open-heart throughout an increasingly chaotic night that gets the laughs while keeping things fresh.

Similarly, the girl who Simon loves (played by Naomë Antoinette) and the girl Tom no longer does (Alison Russo) are given space to create fully realized characters, and Pigasse’s script and the two actresses’ deft performances keep the audience invested in territory that’s been treated as perfunctory in lesser comedy films. Pigasse loves all his characters, and without spoiling any of the increasingly inter-connected twists and turns in the plot, Antoinette and Russo are able to find real heart amidst the laughs.

That’s ultimately the film’s recipe for success: tender when dealing with love, but absurd in how people communicate. Bottled Up has perhaps received the most laughs of any film I’ve seen at the festival this year with it’s heightened world of mix-ups, mayhem, and door-to-door accordionists, but it also manages to strike a surprisingly resonant emotional beat in its ending, with Pigasse’s final line readings proving he can deliver more than a punchline. It’s one thing to see a film that references Providence while seated in the city’s Avon Theater, but it’s something else to realize you’re watching a great one.