Film #43: Trans

Florida filmmaker Julius Goldberger's Trans splashed down at 1999's Sundance festival like a minor post-French New Wave masterwork unearthed decades after being inturred, mysteriously, near the swampy Everglades. Plainly influenced by Truffaut's The 400 Blows -- Goldberger obviously wanted more after Antoine Doniel reached the ocean tide -- Trans follows juvenile prison escapee Ryan Kazinski (played with haunting blankness by Ryan Daugherty) as he traverses southern swamps, suburbs and city streets, driven only by an over-percolated need to keep moving, keep going, keep going on... Trans takes extra inspiration from Godard (in its disjointed editing and sound) and Cassevetes (in realistic but short scenes like Ryan's jittery powwow with overly curious locals lumbering outside a country mart). All the while Goldberger's quietly affecting movie astutely, colorfully dissects a young Turk who, even out of the klink, remains jailed in his own restless skin.