Reviews of TRIPLE BOGEY ON A PAR 5 HOLE > Scenes from the film

"I must admit," wrote Amos Poe in the synopsis to his new film, "that at this stage Triple Bogey defies my every attempt at definition, language or text." The Levy orphans—Amanda, Satch and Bree—have lived on a yacht since their parents Sally and Harry were shot dead on a gold course in Maine. When a French writer is hired by a Japanese producer to come up with a screenplay based on their story, his presence on the yacht and interviews with the Levys and those involved in the story begin to tell a complex family tale. "An investigation into the dual dynamics of memory and screenwriting... A cinematic fable borne of angst, nurtured by love and fated by illusion."

—21st International Forum of Young Cinema, 41st Berlin International Film Festival 1991

From the London Premiere at the ICA:

"Triple Bogey is something like Welles' Confidential Report rewritten by Henry James to Warhol specifications, it's an unashamedly narcissistic film made with passion, wit and intelligence, with a very sharp script and great performances."

—The New Statesman

"Triple Bogey ... has you snoozing with admiration. Elegant, playful, and amusing, Amos Poe's low-budget film is a divertimento on the theme of family relationships."

—The London Sunday Telegraph

"Triple Bogey ... is a case of introspection made electric. Never falling into the trap of forced eccentricity, and extracting spot-on performances from a cast of unknowns, writer-director Amos Poe delivers a hypnotic, bitter-sweet work of low-key power which includes striking views of Manhattan from the water. For once style and substance unite with great beauty."

—John Marriot, The Daily Mail

"Filmed in elegant black-and-white and incorporating grainy home-movie footage in colour... Triple Bogey involves us in the lives of its characters, manages to be constantly amusing and is performed with conviction."

—Philip French, The Observer

"Amos Poe, one of N.Y.'s more imaginative independent directors, certainly knows how to shoot a film... Triple Bogey is quirky, funny, and slightly threatening at the same time... be prepared for deflective observation and the joy of never having a clue as to what is coming next."

—Derek Malcolm, The Guardian

"Easy on the eye, Triple Bogey has wit, style and invention."

—Nick James, City Lights

"Triple Bogey is one of the best films ever made about brats... it's a radical alternative to the NY movie as we know it... hypnotically poised stasis and muted irony are the order of the day, with a monochrome Manhattan providing a beautiful pivot for a voyage around the void. Languidly witty, beautifully shot and splendidly acted, it wears its downtown chic with transfixing grace... it is a magical exercise in stylistic and intellectual tail-chasing that's entirely of its kind, and that rare thing these days—a film that dares to go nowhere."

—Jonathan Romney, TimeOut

"As the stranglehold of the big U.S. distributors throttles to an early video-death any film that fails to make millions in its opening weekend, the American independent movie is currently at risk of becoming moribund. What a shame if people could no longer see flights of the imagination like Amos Poe's Triple Bogey. It is bizarre, oblique, disturbing and amusing."

—Iaian Johnstone, The London Sunday Times

"Angela Goethals is outstanding as the young teenager with a precocious intelligence beyond her years."

—Mangel Stimpson

.....meanwhile in America:

"Triple Bogey is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill independently made movie. It is a sweetly demented original, written, produced and directed by Amos Poe with great style and consistency of wit."

—Vincent Canby, The New York Times

"Citizen Kane has been the Mount Everest of motion pictures since the day it was released 52 years ago. Now here comes independent New York filmmaker Amos Poe galloping and gamboling up the side of that immensity like a crazy mountain goat... the hinge of "Kane" is a March-of-Time reporter named Thompson, whose face we never see, as he interviews whoever knew Kane. Poe daringly employs the same device and heightens it."

—Jerry Tallmer, The New York Post

"Triple Bogey is a fascinating journey through the backstory of three orphans living on a luxurious yacht and the attempts of a screenwriter to discover the essence of their saga. Seldom, if ever, in American cinema has a sensibility of such avant garde and seemingly pessimistic tastes produced films of such compassion and reflection. As an artist and communicator, Amos Poe is not afraid to simultaneously challenge and move an audience."

—Eddie Cockrell, The American Film Institute

"Watchable. Sharply lensed by Joe DeSalvo."

—Variety

"Nothing to brag about."

—The Hollywood Reporter

Why did you climb Mount Everest, they asked. Because it's there, the man replied.

Citizen Kane has been the Mount Everest of motion pictures since the day it was released 52 years ago. Now here comes independent New York filmmaker Amos Poe galloping and gamboling up the side of that immensity like a crazy mountain goat — because it's there — with an almost-brilliant-but-not-quite takeoff called Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole.

Sorry about that title, but there it is, for four days starting tomorrow at Lincoln Center's new Walter Reade theater.

The hinge of Citizen Kane is a March of Time reporter named Thompson (actor William Alland) whose face we never see as he interviews anybody who ever knew Charles Foster Kane.

Amos Poe — as writer, director, and producer — daringly employs the same device and heightens it. Well, his whole gag movie is heightened. The reporter is now a screenwriter named Remy Gravell (actor Eric Mitchell), on the track of a melodrama involving the three crazy-mixed-up kids of the late Harry and Sally (another gag) Levy, a couple of high-livers who were shot down when attempting to stick up the golfers on the 18th hole of the local country club.

"They were just a normal couple. It was only that that summer they robbed banks," says the late H&S's oldest daughter, Amanda (damned attractive newcomer Daisy Hall), herself a flashy novelist whose literary agent is an ex-gangster named Nicky Arnstein, just like Fanny Brice's husband. Home for Amanda and her sibs is now the family yacht, which rather resembles Donald Trump's, cruising up and down the East River as its fat female captain sings "Swanee River" and "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

The other two little orphan Levys are Satch (Jesse McBride), a sulky motorcycling lad who drives golf balls off the yacht's poopdeck and wants to marry a floozie called Cookie and start a store called Wheels, and 14-year-old Bree (Angela Goethals), a terrifying good/bad seed with a cornrow hairdo and an invasive interest in everybody's sex life.

Remy Gravelle, tracking the mystery, enmeshes himself — unlike Kane's Thompson — further and further in everybody's life, and finally in Amanda's arms. Then we see his face, shaving. The only thing is: Charles Foster Kane had dimension. Harry and Sally Levy have no dimension.

—Jerry Tallmer, The New York Post

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