PHYLLIS AND HAROLD
2008 distributed by Rainbow Releasing

With the death of her father, Harold, the filmmaker is finally free to spill all about her parents’ connubial travails. Going back and forth in time, Kleine builds and expands on the mom-and-pop interviews of Til Death Do Us Part, forging a frank, multi-sided, feature-length documentary, It’s partly, too, the
filmmaker’s story, of a childhood which barely registered with Phyllis, the
narcissistic, chronically dissatisfied mother.

Cindy is mostly raised by Annie,  a warm, robust black housekeeper, the secret heart
of the Jewish family, like Tony Kushner’s Caroline.  (The filmmaker swoops in and
out of the story, Supergirl over little-boxes Long Island, courtesy of the vivid, retro-story-book imagery of animator Lisa Crafts.)

Phyllis and Harold, like all good dramas, has a volatile second act, the unexpected return to the tale of Phyllis’s long-long-long-ago lover, still making Phyllis shiver and swoon.  Here is a wobbly Shakespearean, late-November comedy: in lieu of clever
servants, Phyllis’s two adult daughters pass secret notes and arrange clandestine trysts—all under the nose of unsuspecting Harold, still alive at the time. And act
three: the demise of the father, the
liberation of the mother. Goodbye,
suburbia! In her 80s, Phyllis moves
bravely into the city. New York, New York!
Gerald Peary

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