Mulberry St.

Mulberry St. (2010)

*** (out of 4)

If you're a fan of Abel Ferrara then you're bound to enjoy this documentary, which has the Bronx-born filmmaker returning to Mulberry Street. If you're familiar with his early films then you're well aware that this is the street that many of them were shot so Ferrara returns there as a form of a love letter.

MULBERRY ST. is a rather interesting documentary, one of three that the filmmaker made during the later part of his career. This one here really seems like a love letter to a street that he obviously cares for very deeply. Along the way we get to see some professional actors (Matthew Modine, Danny Aiello) as well as a group of friends that the director has been sharing beers with for decades.

There's obviously nothing ground-breaking about this film but at the same time it's pretty cool to see the New York filmmaker basically hanging out with friends and sharing various thoughts about his films and a variety of other subjects. This here will certainly appeal to those familiar with the actual street as well as those interested in the filmmaker.

Born in the Bronx and raised in upstate New York, Abel Ferrara started his professional film career on Mulberry Street in 1975. For the past year he has been living on the block, and the feast of San Gennaro is the subject of his new film. While he has used this location for a few of his features, this time it's the star of the film.

Calling this a documentary is a bit of a stretch, though I do not have a better word for it. Basically, we follow Abel Ferrara around the neighborhood of Mulberry Street, near the intersection with Broome, in New York's Little Italy. The filming is not very professional, the editing is not crisp or sharp. This is just a day of walking around, meeting friends and celebrities (including Danny Aiello and Matthew Modine).

I guess this is really for die-hard Ferara fans, because it does very little in the way of educating the viewer about the neighborhood. I suppose we can see how it is shifting from Italian to Chinese, but that is not really something this focused on.