MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Steal’ a Fresh, Funny Look at the American Dream

Lucy Phillips’ “Steal America” (at the Monica 4-Plex) is likely to steal your affections within its first few minutes. Shot in black-and-white on a next-to-nothing budget, it swiftly introduces us to Christophe (Charlie Homo--reportedly his real name), a young Frenchman, and Stella (Clara Bellino), a young Swiss, who meet on a Greyhound bound for San Francisco, the eternal city of golden but often elusive promise.

Pursuing the American Dream with not much in the way of either financial resources or any easily marketable skills, Christophe winds up parking cars in North Beach while Stella gets a job as a cashier at that landmark postcard store on Upper Grant. Christophe has for the moment deflected her from continuing on to Japan, where she is certain nightclub singing stardom awaits her. They and the other venturesome young Europeans (and Americans) they meet are more naive than you expect them to be, but in hospitable and civilized San Francisco it’s probably easier not to notice that you’re not getting anywhere than any other city in the country.

Even so, Christophe does get fed up, steals a Chevy Impala and gets Stella and their friend Maria (Diviana Ingravallo) to take off with him for New Orleans; never mind that none of them has a green card. Just as we’re revving up for yet another lark of a road movie, like it or not, Phillips and co-writer Glen Scantlebury abruptly shift gears. We move a year ahead where we find Stella and Maria, a performance artist, back in San Francisco and both doing their gigs at the Chi-Chi Club; Stella is also caught up in a romance with a free-spirited, struggling artist (Kevin Haley).

(What happened is that new funds allowed the filmmakers to extend their original 45-minute vignette, an instance of necessity coming off as inspiration.)

In a perfectly natural offhand way we learn in time what happened to the women and to Christophe and, in an equally casual manner, that the lush-looking Maria is bisexual. What’s important is that inevitably Stella and others around her, no matter how intent they are on just having fun, are finally confronted with themselves and the question of what they’re going to do with their lives.

It’s hard to imagine how this film or its people could be more ingratiating. Accompanied by Gregory Jones’ lively, bouncy score, the film zips along without a trace of self-consciousness or pretentiousness.

As a director, Phillips, an Englishwoman who arrived in San Francisco on a Greyhound herself in 1987, gives her cast the confidence to shine and shoots every scene with a minimum of fuss.

“Steal America” manages to be a sparkling, clearly very personal romantic comedy with just the right amount of poignancy to offset the laughter, yet it never once calls attention to itself. In its beguilingly modest way, “Steal America” (Times-rated Mature for adult themes) is a pleasure from start to finish yet endlessly reveals the difference between America real and imagined.

‘Steal America’

Clara Bellino: Stella

Diviana Ingravallo: Maria

Kevin Haley: Jack

Charlie Homo: Christophe

A Seamless Pictures/Pacific Fund Film production. Director Lucy Phillips. Producer Liz Gazzanno. Executive producers Susan O’Connell, Patricia Marshall. Screenplay by Phillips, Glen Scantlebury. Cinematographer Jim Barett, Scantlebury. Editor Scantlebury. Music Gregory Jones. Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (adult themes).