"TADPOLE" DOESN'T need the passage of time to become a classic. It's one already.
But you don't even have to get all the allusions. This is an original unto itself, one of the smartest, most affecting movies of the year. And it's mind-boggling to learn this shoestring-budget movie was shot in 14 days with a Sony HDCAM hand-held digital camera. That's imagination for you.
Meet Oscar Grubman (Aaron Stanford), a 15-year-old sophomore whose idea of a good time is reading Moliere or debating Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations." We meet him as the boarding school student arrives home for Thanksgiving.
Home is Manhattan, where his father, Stanley (John Ritter), lives with his second wife, Eve (Sigourney Weaver). Oscar (whose actual mother is French and lives in Paris), is entranced with his stepmother, a beautiful woman with a great heart and elegant hands -- this latter quality an important item on Oscar's list.
What do you do when you're 15 and madly in love with your stepmother? Oscar attempts to hide his feelings. But her allure and proximity are irresistible. His passion is impossible to contain. And he rejects any female suitors his age.
"You are so weird," says the teenage Daphne (Alicia Van Couvering), after Oscar has bundled her into a cab rather than walk her home.
Disconsolate and drunk, Oscar bumps into 40-year-old Diane (Bebe Neuwirth), Eve's best friend and a constant presence in the Grubman house. He agrees to her invitation to stay the night, so his father doesn't see him in this condition. Diane's wearing Eve's scarf. A warm, burgundy scarf. Eve's. Let the complications begin.
Clearly, newcomer Stanford's career is launched after this movie. Twenty-three when this film was shot, his canny, sensitive portrayal of Oscar (described in the movie as "a 40-year-old trapped in a 15-year-old's body") is one of the year's delights.
Around him, the cast is wonderfully assured. Weaver makes a radiant Older Woman who becomes increasingly aware of Oscar's feelings, and surprised at her vulnerability. Neuwirth is a stitch as the mischievous Diane, always looking to tweak an already tense situation. And Ritter is hilarious, a self-important academician who's too lost in himself to understand what's happening in his son's heart.
"First of all," he begins grandiloquently, just before the Grubmans and their guests begin Thanksgiving dinner, "I'd like to apologize to Native Americans everywhere for decimating their population and basically stealing this country from . . . "
He's interrupted by hoots and catcalls.
An audience favorite at Sundance and winner of the Best Director award for Gary Winick, "Tadpole" is, quite simply, a gem. Screenwriters Winick, Heather McGowan and Niels Mueller finesse the humor so it flows directly from the story, without a hint of artifice. The story's searingly romantic, too. There's a heart-pounder of a scene in which Eve, a cardiologist, talks with rapture about the heart as a great organ. "Cut the aorta and you'll release a jet of blood that hits the ceiling," she says, breathlessly. Little does she realize the effect her words are having on Oscar. He's not the only one entranced. You'll be too.
TADPOLE (PG-13, 77 minutes) -- Contains sexual language and situations. At the Cineplex White Flint and Cinema.
Sigourney Weaver, left, Aaron Stanford, John Ritter and Bebe Neuwirth in the fresh, smart "Tadpole."
