MOVIE REVIEW : NOSTALGIA AT ITS BEST IN ‘COUSIN’

Canadian film maker Sandy Wilson’s semi-autobiographical “My American Cousin” (at the Beverly Center Cineplex) is a little gem, offering a look back to a particular time and place not only with boundless amusement and affection but with exceptional clarity and subtlety. This is nostalgia at its most endearing and admirable.

It’s the summer of 1959, and from a modest home on a beautiful moonlit lake in British Columbia we hear “Some Enchanted Evening” on a phonograph. What could be more appropriate, you may ask, yet inside 12-year-old--”but only three months to 13”--Sandy Wilcox (Margaret Langrick) has just scrawled across her diary in disgust, “Nothing ever happens.”

She’s immediately proved wrong. A spectacular red El Dorado Biarritz convertible pulls up to the house, and out steps the shining prince of every young girl’s dream, an impossibly handsome blonde, blue-eyed youth of 16 or 17. He’s Sandy’s cousin Butch (John Wildman) from California, but so exotic and glamorous does he seem in rural, conservative Canada that he might as well have arrived from Mars. (Aside from his regulation James Dean look, jeans and T-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled in the sleeve, Butch could pass for the Buster Crabbe of “Flash Gordon.”)

Butch’s explanation that he’s merely on a vacation is met with understandable skepticism by Sandy’s father, an ex-army major (Richard Donat), who promptly puts the kid to work picking cherries. But Butch just wants to have fun, and his restlessness matches that of Sandy, who constantly insists she’s “not a child” and bickers with her mother (Jane Mortifee).

In her feature debut Wilson lovingly captures an idyllic moment--the kind of exhilarating moment everyone should be lucky enough to experience in the throes of adolescent miseries. Taking Butch into town to meet her friends is a kind of triumphal progress for Sandy, who, of course, pretends nonchalance while he devastates her girl friends. “My American Cousin” is a an expression of pure, innocent joy recollected with thoughtful perception and saved from sentimentality by a witty, running commentary on Canadian American relations and attitudes.

The perspective of “My American Cousin “ is that of an adult, one who can have fun with the stuffiness of Sandy’s parents yet acknowledge their abundant decency and goodness. We realize that Sandy’s father may lose his beloved ranch, thanks to a bad cherry crop, but never once does he or his wife burden their children with their fears--and never once do we feel that their wheelchair-bound son is a burden to them either. We come to realize, too, that for all his Yank bravado Butch is a scared, unloved youth.

“My American Cousin” (rated PG but definitely family fare) is period perfect, even to the film’s bright hues, without lapsing into kitsch, and one could not ask more of its cast. In her acting debut Langrick is a natural, alternately exasperating and adorable, always resilient. Donat amusingly conveys attitudes and bearing of a military man, but the film’s real discovery is John Wildman who’s like Clint Eastwood in the detached, playful but never cruel pleasure he takes in the power he has over women. ‘MY AMERICAN COUSIN’

A Spectrafilm release of a Peter O’Brian Independent Pictures production in association with Borderline Productions, Inc. Writer-director-co-producer Sandy Wilson. Camera Richard Leiterman. Art director/assoc. producer Phillip Schmidt. Costumes Philip Clarkson, Sheila Bingham. Film editor Haida Paul. With Margaret Langrick, John Wildman, Richard Donat, Jane Mortifee, T.J. Scott, Camille Henderson, Darsi Bailey, Alison Hale, Samantha Jocelyn, Babs Chula, Terry Moore.

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

MPAA rating: PG (Parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.)