Philly Abe can’t entirely understand why she’s in a more introspective and reflective mood when she’s stark naked in a bathtub in “Flying Lessons,” but you imagine she wouldn’t have it any other way. A veteran of the Lower East Side when a community of artists was truly transgressive, the regular of films by avant garde filmmakers such as George Kuchar and Todd Verow has been fearless in exposing body and soul for the cameras and in Elizabeth Nichols’ endearing portrait of the iconoclast, she becomes an emblem of an entire way of life that appears to be on the verge of disappearing completely.
You couldn’t find a more obvious metaphor for cultural eradication than where Nichols first finds Philly, recently served with an eviction notice like a number of other tenants by an unscrupulous new landlord in a building where rent-controlled apartments pull in nowhere near their value on the open market. With her blazing red hair and equally fiery temperament, there’s no question why others rally around her to speak up in protest at public hearings – she concurs, “I’m very succinct and possibly nasty” – but a kinder soul is revealed underneath by her commitment to community, both in terms of her neighbors and as a fixture in the arts scene. Clips of old single-reel movies she appeared in are intercut into her present life, serving both as memories of who she was and most likely dreams of the person she’d like to be now if the world didn’t seem so intent on becoming uniform. When a civil suit against Steve Croman, the real estate magnate responsible for the unlawful harassment of his oldest tenants, starts to make its way through the system, Nichols doesn’t even have to bother spending time on the particulars of the case when Philly Abe’s resistance to all things can be demonstrated in other ways with glimpses of her punk rock history.
When Philly Abe identifies herself as a bird, albeit of different feathers at different points in her life, “Flying Lessons” reveals itself to be a tender profile of someone who has preferred to live with her head in the clouds and too often is violently pulled back to earth, particularly now as she ages and she isn’t only threatened with being displaced from her apartment but her own body starts to fail her. The kind of self-made creation that gave New York City such a strong personality, Nichols doesn’t observe her tamed by time so much as the world being drained of color around her as millennials play inconsequential sports in the street and the raw feeling inherent in the old films she made is at odds with the polished era she lives in presently. The director, who was compelled to make the film after living next to Philly Abe in the same building, is careful to make an aesthetically beautiful film that is not without its rough edges, envisioning grace where others could see thorns in terms of its subject, and whether or not she is forced to move, “Flying Lessons” shows her for the pillar to the community that she is.
“Flying Lessons” does not yet have U.S. distribution.
