Florida Film Festival: EYE OF THE HURRICANE

By Samir Mathur
Contributing writer
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For all my Film Festival coverage, look for the tag FFF2012

EYE OF THE HURRICANE plays in the 21st annual Florida Film Festival tomorrow (4/15) at 5.45pm at Enzian and again next Sunday at Regal Winter Park Village (Details)

Directed by Rollins graduate and current UCF Professor Jesse Wolfe, and set in the Everglades, 'Eye of the Hurricane' is very much a Florida film, and so there's no better place for it than FFF2012. Set in the immediate aftermath of a devastating hurricane, there are a lot of plot strands, but it's centered around Amelia (Melanie Lynskey), whose husband has not been seen since his military plane disappeared. While she's freaking out about that, her son Homer is trying to recover his eye, which was lost in the chaos. Her daughter Renee is trying to be a normal teenager amidst all this upheaval. The story fits in bullies, Native American mystics, Brian Doyle Murray and a lot of emotion. It's definitely a heavy picture, though the young actors that play Homer and his partner-in-crime Abby are really excellent and give the film its rare moments of levity. It's a fascinating story of how different people react to sudden tragedy, and it's interesting to see how the kids can hold it together better than most of the adults. The cinematography really stood out too, with beautiful footage of the Everglades, of abandoned streets and of the refugee camps. It's an auspicious debut for Wolfe, and I'm sure we'll see his work in the Festival again in the future.