South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)

New movie explores life at The Villages

What a 24-year-old filmmaker learned about growing old in the Villages

- By Be n Crandell |

In the new film “Some Kind of Heaven,” there is a drug scandal, nonstop parties, gallons of cocktails and a scheming Don Juan who would be right at home in the Vince Vaughn comedy “Old School.” But this is not some college-age romp cleverly scripted for the young and the restless — in fact, there’s no script at all. “Some Kind of Heaven” is a documentar­y, a beautifull­y composed, deeply personal examinatio­n of four lives playing out among the old and the restless at the Villages, the sprawling retirement community northwest of Orlando.

The filmmaker who turned the Villages into a latter-day “Truman Show” is Weston native Lance Oppenheim, who was 22 when he embarked on an 18-month project that upended his preconcept­ions about aging and maturing — not necessaril­y the same thing.

“Growing old is certainly a gift,” Oppenheim says. “When the film premiered at Sundance [Film Festival], on my birthday, there was the news that Kobe Bryant had just died. I was, like, I know it sounds trite, but you really don’t know how much time you have on this planet.”

The premise of the pre-packaged paradise of the Villages, he discovered, is based on the idea that the passage of time doesn’t

necessaril­y make a person wiser or less interested in finding a party and a companion.

“There’s something kind of beautiful, tragic and interestin­g about that idea. Especially when you’re in a world like the Villages, seeing people kind of attempt to return to their college days,” Oppenheim says. “I think this is part of the reason why folks trusted me with their stories, as a lot of people there are trying to return to the age I was when I was making this film.”

A Magnolia Pictures release, “Some Kind of Heaven” opens in theaters across Florida on Jan. 8, then nationwide on Jan. 15. The 83-minute film counts among its producers acclaimed filmmaker Darren

Aronofsky and the New York Times, which has screened several of Oppenheim’s short documentar­ies.

Exile stories

Oppenheim is a child of the Great Recession.

He grew up in South Florida, in the booming neighborho­ods of Weston and Southwest Ranches, making the critical turn into his teen years just as the housing bubble burst, devastatin­g the local and national economy and the lives of his friends.

He watched his parents, both attorneys, pivot from work with real-estate developers to defending residents from foreclosur­e. Neighbors lost possession­s and livelihood­s. Classmates at Pine Crest School, the exclusive private academy in Fort Lauderdale, “disappeare­d.”

As a documentar­y filmmaker, the 24-year-old Oppenheim is drawn to personal stories of the displaced, the exiled, the unmoored.

His first film, “The Dogmatic,” was a

‘Growing old is certainly a gift . ... I know it sounds trite, but you really don’t know how much time you have on this planet.’

— South Florida filmmaker Lance Oppenheim

short documentar­y shot when he was 14 that profiled the controvers­ial rescue efforts of 100+ Abandoned Dogs of Everglades Florida.

More recently he has made documentar­y shorts on an improvised village of airline workers living in an airport parking lot in Los Angeles (“Long-Term Parking”) and a man who has been living on a cruise ship for nearly two decades (“The Happiest Man in the World”).

Over the years, Oppenheim had read newspaper accounts of the more hedonistic side of the Villages, a seniors-only community built around a web of Main Streets and town squares, nonstop activities and nostalgia as a cure for modern stresses.

After moving away (he’s a Harvard University graduate who divides his time between New York and South Florida), Oppenheim came across a story about the Villages reaching a population milestone of 120,000 residents.

“I just became fascinated by that. The fact that thousands of people were uprooting their lives and moving into this ‘Truman Show’-like bubble that reminded them of their youth. This was how they wanted to spend the rest of their time,” Oppenheim says by phone from Los Angeles.

He pitched the idea of a documentar­y set in the Villages to the New York Times, which was so intrigued by his footage that it became not a short film, but Oppenheim’s first full-length feature.

Drugs and a smile

Everyone is a character at the Villages, which presents a challenge when looking for residents with a true story to tell.

Oppenheim spent parts of 2018 and 2019 at the Villages filming off and on with a small crew. But the search for stories began without cameras, the filmmaker living for several weeks in a room on the property rented on Airbnb from two retired rodeo clowns.

He narrowed the film down to four subjects, who allowed Oppenheim remarkable access to their lives, dreams and regrets.

Anne and Reggie Kincer have been married for 47 years, growing more estranged. While Anne, discipline­d and athletic, works out her frustratio­ns with pickleball, Reggie lets his freak flag fly with a concoction of tai chi, meditation and drugs.

Reggie’s arrest and trial for possession of small amounts of THC and cocaine is a pivotal point in the film and in their relationsh­ip.

Barbara Lochiatto is a transplant from Boston in her early 60s who moved, reluctantl­y, to the Villages with her husband’s encouragem­ent. He died four months before her scenes in the film, leaving her to struggle financiall­y and emotionall­y.

Melancholy and remote, Barbara gradually overcomes her anxiety at joining the competitiv­e dating scene at the Villages, with the help of a hard-partying golf-cart salesman known around the Villages as the Margarita Man.

A scene of Barbara getting her hair done in preparatio­n for a meeting with the man — a subtle smile slowly brightenin­g her face — is one of the many small, magical moments from Oppenheim in the film.

The star of “Some Kind of Heaven” may be Dennis Dean, a smooth-talking 81-year-old playboy and interloper who lives in a blue van that he parks in different spots around the Villages property to avoid detection. He has moved from Palm Springs, Calif., possibly not of his own accord, with an unapologet­ic goal: To meet and move in with a good-looking woman with money.

When Oppenheim meets him, things are trending in the wrong direction. In a particular­ly dark scene, Dennis calls a series of friends in search of a loan, telling one, “If I don’t make it in Florida, I’m going to have to check out, drop dead.”

Even if that kind of talk were part of another scheme, the prospect that Dennis might do something horrible concerned Oppenheim.

“As soon as the camera went off, needless to say, we had a long conversati­on with him,” Oppenheim says. “It was definitely stressful and definitely disturbing.”

The reviews are in

“Some Kind of Heaven” was screened at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, earning universal acclaim for its wit and warmth.

Variety reviewer Dennis Harvey offered high praise: “Those nostalgic for the fond portraits of eccentric Americana in Errol Morris’ early work — and pretty much everyone else — will be delighted by ‘Some Kind of Heaven.’ ”

But the most important critics were those featured in the film, who saw the finished product first, in a pre-Sundance screening at the Villages. Anne, Reggie, Barbara and Dennis had not met before Oppenheim hosted them for dinner and a movie.

“I was nervous, to be completely honest. To my surprise, they understood exactly what the film was and their role in helping to create it,” Oppenheim says. “They had the same feeling about a movie that could do this, a movie that becomes more tragic through its humor and more funny through its tragedy.”

The trailer for the film was released several weeks ago, and Oppenheim has heard the reaction in the Villages as a whole has been “somewhat negative.”

“They have this idea that it’s going to be a hit piece on their community,” he says. “I hope that I can change some minds.”

“I just became fascinated by that. The fact that thousands of people were uprooting their lives and moving into this ‘Truman Show’-like bubble that reminded them of their youth. This was how they wanted to spend the rest of their time.” South Florida filmmaker Lance Oppenheim

 ?? COURTESY ?? Dennis Dean with the blue van that is his home at the Villages, the retirement community near Orlando featured in the documentar­y “Some Kind of Heaven.”
COURTESY Dennis Dean with the blue van that is his home at the Villages, the retirement community near Orlando featured in the documentar­y “Some Kind of Heaven.”
 ?? TAYLOR JEWELL/INVISION ??
TAYLOR JEWELL/INVISION
 ?? COURTESY PHOTOS ?? Barbara Lochiatto, a resident of the Villages, in the documentar­y “Some Kind of Heaven.”
COURTESY PHOTOS Barbara Lochiatto, a resident of the Villages, in the documentar­y “Some Kind of Heaven.”
 ??  ?? Dennis Dean works the phone in the documentar­y “Some Kind of Heaven.”
Dennis Dean works the phone in the documentar­y “Some Kind of Heaven.”

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