Assisted Living
The first film for writer/director/producer Elliot Greenebaum, Assisted Living chronicles a day in the life of a young nursing home janitor. Michael Bonsignore stars as Todd, the pot-smoking custodian who takes pleasure in toying with the senile residents of the retirement community. When one of the residents mistakes Todd for her son, he finds himself becoming emotionally attached to his work for the first time. In order to lend the film a realistic fly-on-the-wall quality, Greenebaum shot it in an actual nursing home, using real residents as many of the actors, and mixed in footage from a documentary he had made at the facility, blurring the lines between fact and fiction. Assisted Living won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Slamdance Film Festival.
Director: Elliot Greenebaum
Starring: Michael Bonsignore, Maggie Riley, Nancy Jo Boone, Malerie Boone, Clint Vaught
This finale turns Assisted Living from fascinating experimental film into something finer.
Works more often than it doesn't.
Gently filmed, quietly thoughtful, sometimes almost heartbreaking.
May be a comedy, but its images of physical frailty are inescapably unsettling. As the camera fixates on frail, spotted trembling hands unsteadily reaching out, it is impossible not to imagine a future in which those hands could be yours.
Only 22 when he began shooting the film, Greenebaum displays a prodigious understanding of the treatment of the elderly in contemporary America.
Best Feature
Gen Art Film Festival (2003)
Elliot Greenebaum
Slamdance Film Festival (2003)
Best Feature Film
Woodstock Film Festival (2003)
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