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Paper Moon


Paper Moon (1973) N

What would bring father and daughter (or not) better together than some conning?


Looks like someone wants 200 dollars.

9-year-old Addie's mother has died and her only living relatives live pretty far away. Fortunately a con man, Moses, who used to know her mother happens to be in town and it's decided that he takes Addie to her aunt. There are quite a few bends in the road and Addie ends up teaming with Moses whom she believes to be her father. Together they con their way onward with some ups and some downs.

Story itself is very simple but Paper Moon is much like a road movie anyway. There's no big plot to solve but a long journey for the main characters to get acquainted and bonded. In the beginning Moses is just trying to use Addie as a piece in another con but finds the hard way that she's not someone you can bully out of her share. In typical comedy style Addie pretty much ends up being the brains of the operation.


"Are you pushing?"

Biggest reason the film works so well is absolutely brilliant performances by Ryan and Tatum O'Neal as Moses and Addie. While many husband-wife duos fail to have any chemistry on screen together this father-daughter pair has a truckload. It seems that some have accused the director for "manufacturing" Tatum's performance with huge amount of takes but who cares - the result is just so good that any number of takes is justified.

Black-and-white cinematography is beautiful and fits perfectly to the depression imagery. I don't find anything to nitpick about the technical aspects. Script has some issues though. The part with Trixie isn't too good and it feels weird how Moses falls so easily for her antics. Also the way Moses loses their money feels little cheap (how conveniently he just happened to need to carry everything with him, I think that's little lazy writing).

Overall very entertaining drama-comedy about depression era swindling by father-daughter duo with amazingly good performances by the leads.