Dito Montiel’s A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints evokes a therapy-confessional atmosphere, a hallmark of the Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered and was developed. Montiel directs and adapts his own novel, a coming-of-age story set in the tough New York borough of Queens during the 1980s. The result is indulgent yet often interesting and ambitious, attempting to recreate the free-wheeling, jazz-improvisational style of classic independent 70s cinema. It features characters hanging out, overlapping conversations, Italian parents jabbering in the kitchen, complaints about the stifling heat, long tracking shots along the sidewalk, and spirited drives into rival gang territories in a gigantic Impala.
Shia LaBeouf embodies the young Dito, the quiet, studious figure common in autobiographical tales. He doesn’t just dream of escaping this “hellhole”; he understands the absolute necessity to leave quickly, lest he be consumed by the deadly gang warfare claiming the lives of his peers. The story of his boyhood is remembered with lyrical intensity, devoid of nostalgia, juxtaposed with the emotional return of the adult Dito, played by Robert Downey Jr., who abandoned his friends to become a successful writer in California, exploiting their desperate lives for material.
Downey delivers a conflicted, in-recovery portrayal, reminiscent of his real-life courtroom appearances. While his often inaccessible, inward performance might be a familiar trope, it lends authenticity to the story, particularly when Dito confronts those he left behind: the girl who loved him (Rosario Dawson) and his elderly parents, portrayed with a hint of stereotype by Dianne West and Chazz Palminteri.
While not everything in a guide to recognizing your saints review works perfectly, the redundancy and lack of strict direction are refreshingly reminiscent of the loose-limbed American filmmaking of past decades. A particularly enjoyable sequence depicts Dito and his Scottish friend Mike (Martin Compston) working for Frank (Anthony DeSando), a gay dog-walker. They casually stroll the streets with their pack of dogs, engaging in conversation. Frank even breaks the fourth wall, speaking directly into the camera for no apparent reason. Modern screenplay seminars might frown upon this bagginess, this aimless riffing. Yet, it was perhaps in this kind of serendipitous drifting that American directors once discovered a modern equivalent to the Parisian flâneur, a way of stumbling upon highly charged epiphanies.
Montiel’s film captures some of this essence, alongside a self-conscious eccentricity. Oddly, some dialogue is subtitled, even in sections that aren’t noticeably more indistinct than others. Furthermore, Martin Compston’s character occasionally feels superfluous.
Nevertheless, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints review stands as a worthwhile, intelligent picture, even if its structure isn’t always conventional. The film’s exploration of memory, guilt, and the complexities of leaving home resonates, making it a thought-provoking exploration of coming-of-age in challenging circumstances.
