Directors: Youssef Delara, Michael D. Olmos
Cast: Gina Rodriguez, Chrissie Fit, Lou Diamond Phillips, Edward James Olmos.
Running Time: 91 minutes
Synopsis: Maria Jose ‘Majo’ Tonorio is a tough LA street poet who spits from the heart. After meeting a talented DJ she cuts her first demo under the guidance of a small time hustler more interested in promoting Majo’s sexuality than her lyrics. Soon a major label and its strong-arm executive come calling. Convinced that a record deal will deliver much needed money for the family, Majo is suddenly faced with some stark choices. Does she accept the deal and turn her back on the friends who got her to the precipice of success or does she let a golden opportunity slip away.
Majo Tonoro , aka Filly Brown, is a resident of Echo Park, a Los Angeles neighbourhood northwest of the downtown area of the city. She runs the household in which she lives, taking over the mother role to a seventeen year old sister Lupe, and their ageing father Jose, here played by Lou Diamond Phillips. She has dreams of a musical career, in particular hip-hop, a genre in which she finds she is particularly good at, and she ventures from her bedroom to local radio station to ‘spit’ her talent and gain street level respect.
Her mother, Maria, resides in the county jail, sentenced to a ten stretch for a drug related crime. Both Jose and younger sister Lupe have distanced themselves from the drug addle Maria, bar Filly, who strives to get her mother released from the institution that has driven their family apart. When the integrity of the original trial comes into question, Maria asks Filly to get an amount of money to a friend of the family to push for a retrial, and it seems that the only way she can do this is to ‘sell out’ her talent to a small time music producer who sees her sound and look as being something completely different altogether…
If you were to put 8 MILE, HUSTLE & FLOW and HONEY into a washing machine, put it on a spin-cycle for twenty minutes and then hang out to dry, you’d get something along the lines of FILLY BROWN, a tale of ambition, hopes, dreams, family, friendship and honour, a film from former visual effects co-ordinator Youssef Delara and co-director Michael D. Olmos, who last worked together on the 2010 indie film BEDROOMS. It’s a simple story of a young girl’s dreams, dampened by reality, and the people around her and the sacrifices she has to make to indeed make them happen.
I mention 8 MILE for obvious reasons, and while I hate to compare movies side by side, it’s inevitable with this, and I can see the billboards now with the words ‘the female 8 MILE’ blazoned across them; but FILLY BROWN is much deeper than that film; it’s more engaging, there is more of an interesting story and the performances are top notch, notably from lead Gina Rodriguez who is outstanding as Filly. She is superb, as is a lot of the cast, including a return to form Lou Diamond Phillips who has been undeservedly missing from our screens for years. Even Noel Gugliemi, who you’ll recognise from the likes of THE SHIELD, HARSH TIMES, TRAINING DAY etc. He plays slightly against type as record producer Big Cee, but in an equally menacing role to any of the bad boy gangsters he’s played in any of those aforementioned movies.
The best asset of this film is actually the music, and being a fan of the genre, I loved the hooks and sounds of the flick as much as the acting in it. Even if you aren’t into hip-hop, you’ll appreciate the art behind it, and much like HUSTLE & FLOW, we get to see how such tracks are assembled and produced on the screen before. Just brilliant.
On the downside, there are a few more predictable moments that you can see coming a way off, added to some stereotypical situations which grated at times, but these are very minor points in an otherwise enjoyable movie.
FILLY BROWN was reviewed at the 2012 Sundance London Film and Music Festival.
