Movie Chile Review

Tchoupitoulas

By: Laurel Gladden
Published online: Friday, January 18, 2013
Appeared in: Pasateimpo

Capsule review

This mesmerizing documentary works best if you toss aside sticky questions of veracity and continuity and just let it wash over you, like a dream. Directed by brothers Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV, Tchoupitoulas (named after a busy New Orleans street) follows Bryan, Kentrell, and William Zanders — along with their dog Buttercup — as they spend an evening wandering the streets of the Big Easy. In between encounters with characters and glimpses inside various venues, William shares random thoughts and observations and the Rosses blur and swirl the streetlights, creating hypnotic moments of colorful abstraction. Not rated. 80 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe. 

Full Review

Tchoupitoulas, dreamlike documentary, not rated, Center for Contemporary Arts, 3 chiles

While you’re sitting in the dark theater watching this brief, mesmerizing film, your mind might wander. You might start thinking about a childhood adventure, a vacation in New Orleans, the first time you spent a night away from home, or a time you got lost in a strange city. Your inclination to day- dream won’t be because the film is boring, though. It just may lull you into a reverie with its serene, dreamlike quality; jewel-like colors and blurry lights; easy, natural pacing; and musical rhythms.

Directed by brothers Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV, Tchoupitoulas (named after a busy New Orleans street, pronounced chop-a-tool-us) follows Bryan, Kentrell, and William Zanders, who live in the Algiers neighbor- hood, across the Mississippi River. One day, at sunset, they take their dog Buttercup and hop on the ferry to spend an evening wandering the streets of the Big Easy. Like three Cinderellas, they remind one another that the last ferry home is at midnight. The fact that they miss the boat (that’s not a spoiler, really) doesn’t serve as a plot point so much as a device to give the boys additional hours to explore their one-of-a-kind city.

As we follow them around, we encounter all sorts of characters: scraggly- looking drunkards, motor-mouthed oyster shuckers, strippers, drag queens, sidewalk evangelists, fire twirlers, and musicians, from rappers to buskers to elderly bluesmen. The brothers also meander through darker, less-populated avenues, where William gets some tips on playing the flute from a young woman dressed as a fairy and a heavily intoxicated dude tries to convince a woman to go home with him.

In between street scenes and glimpses inside various venues are hypnotic moments of abstraction, during which clever William, in voice-over, shares random thoughts, dreams, and observations and the Rosses blur and swirl the streetlights. You feel like you’re looking through a giant kaleidoscope. The boys’ banter is sometimes indecipherable, but that’s OK. It has a bouncy, impromptu rhythm that echoes the jazz filling the streets.

Some of the scenes are clearly spontaneous, while others feel somewhat staged. You wonder if the boys missed their ferry accidentally or if the Rosses orchestrated the whole thing. When the brothers sneak onto a spooky old riverboat, was the idea theirs or the Rosses’? Were they really in any danger, with the camera crew following them?

Though the film is edited to suggest that the boys’ adventure takes place during a single night, the events were actually filmed over a nine-month period. That doesn’t really matter, though. The Rosses were clearly intent on capturing the feel of a night spent stumbling around New Orleans; they certainly succeeded, so who cares if they distilled the best of nine months into less than 90 minutes? Tchoupitoulas works best if you toss aside sticky questions of veracity and continuity and just let the film wash over you like a dream.