The Ideal

The past is all around us, so says the high school history teacher to his summer school part time workers on assignment for something more than they bargained for. The Ideal, a film by Wes Tomas Ciesla, walks the fine taut line of suspense in a high school scenario and dances around the rim of cliches turning out a nicely, tightly-knitted, interweaving stories that slowly unravel before the viewer’s eyes. This is not the first story from Mr. Ciesla trained in making tension-filled films out of the dark corners in human minds. Maybe that’s where he gets his slow, steady set up before turning on the heat for the ultimate send off.

The actors are mostly Jersey home grown with fine skills and good chemistry. I could have done without the opening scenes of personal grooming, but that’s my pet peeve, one of the things on my lists for what is used in indie filmmaking. That is not always a bad thing as many indie filmmakers with European ties tend to include these scenarios. Most recently Julie Delpy and her French family in Two Days in New York, a happy romp where very intimate bodily functions detail prominently in just about every scene in the movie.

Nevertheless, younger audiences will connect with the high school antics, perhaps because Mr. Ciesla taught filmmaking to Teaneck High School students for many years before the Christie administration budget cuts. I add that his students regularly won top honors at the Jersey Filmmakers of Tomorrow student film festival. This release from his day job teaching may be the push necessary to get his feature film into the distribution pipeline which it just recently did. Well done.

The story is high school film noir all filming taking place at the gothic Teaneck High School in Teaneck, New Jersey, solid production on all fronts particularly the cinematography. Written by Rivka Rappoport, the film stars Dennis Brito, Kristen Brancaccio and Ivan Perez.