Myra Paci Films

Searching for Paradise

Gilda Mattei, just graduating from high school, is infatuated with the sexy and enigmatic Hollywood movie star Michael De Santis. With her new video camcorder, she documents her fascination with him, her internal world of dreams and fantasies, and her strained though loving relationship with her dying father. After her father dies, Gilda discovers evidence of his long affair with an Italian woman. Her crush on Michael De Santis takes an obsessive turn and she decides to go on a search to find him. Posing as an Italian journalist with the same name and persona as her father’s mistress, she succeeds in making it onto the film set where De Santis is shooting and to a private interview with him. She finds that De Santis is both exactly what she hoped for and nothing of the kind – just like her father.

Cast (in credits order)
Susan May Pratt: Gilda Mattei
Chris Noth: Michael De Santis
Jeremy Davies: Adam
John Pierson : Jim Johnson
Michele Placido: Giorgio Mattei
Laila Robins: Barbara Mattei
Josef Sommer: Carl Greenslate
Mary Louise Wilson: Evelyn Greenslate
Produced by
Ruth Charny: producer
Janet Grillo: producer
Myra Paci: writer/director
Jonathan Shoemaker: co-producer

Original Music by
Carter Burwell
Cinematography by
Teodoro Maniaci
Film Editing by
Robin Lee
Beatrice Sisul

Festivals
• Festival du Cinema Americain Independent d'Agen, France
• IFP West/Los Angeles Film Festival, Competition
• San Francisco International Film Festival
• Boston Film Festival, Competition
• Hamptons International Film Festival, Competition
• New Orleans Film Festival, Competition
• Austin Film Festival, Competition
• Milan International Film Festival, Competition
• Hawaii International Film Festival, Gala Presentation
• Newport Beach Film Festival
• Philadelphia Film Festival
• Southern Circuit Film Festival
• Rhode Island International Film Festival
• San Diego Film Festival
• Grand Prize - Best Feature Film, Festival du Cinema Americain Independent d'Agen, France
• Kodak Award for Cinematography, Hamptons International Film Festival
• Best Actress Award, Milan International Film Festival

- Janice Page
The Boston Globe
"BROOKLINE NATIVE DELIVERS `'PARADISE'
'Don't become too American,' a dying Italian immigrant father warns his teenage daughter. What he means to tell her, though she can't understand it just yet, is: Don't be so literal. Appreciate life's imperfections. Stop searching for paradise and start living as though you've found it. Brookline native Myra Paci's Searching for Paradise is a deeply personal, somewhat autobiographical work exploring the poignant and sometimes bizarre journey of Gilda Matte, a teenager who can't begin to grieve until she abandons her idealized notions of love. To get there, she'll need to work through a Freudian fantasy that has her obsessing over a movie star to the point of stalking. If that sounds creepy, it's really not; the course she charts is far more sad than scary. Paci's sensitive, multi layered script is helped considerably by some first-rate performances. The little-known Susan May Pratt does a fearless star turn, making the many faces of Gilda natural and engaging. Chris Noth (Big from Sex and the City) makes a credible self-involved celebrity, and ultimately helps the girl discover how to live with loss and disappointment."

- Shawn Levy
The Oregonian
"In Searching for Paradise, writer-director Myra Paci has created a film of delicate emotions and techniques packed with enough muscle and freshness to compare favorably with such recent coming-of-age films as Tadpole and Igby Goes Down.
Susan May Pratt (Center Stage) gives a full-blooded performance as Gilda, a recent Michigan high school grad who loses her father (Michele Placido) and her bearings at around the same time. Unsure of her future plans, she spends her time mooning over a moody actor (Chris Noth) and brooding over the revelation that her dad wasn't as noble as the Dante poems he loved. Gilda visits her grandparents in New York, ostensibly for Granddad's birthday but really to see if she can find the actor. She does, but only after a flirtation with a Ph.D. student (Jeremy Davies) and learning some hard truths. And, no surprise, meeting her movie star hero isn't exactly as she'd imagined.

Paci's touch is delicate and precise, sometimes floating off for poetic little reveries, sometimes cutting surgically to the most hurtful truths. The ambivalence of tone and content is nicely captured in Pratt's confident performance and her look: sometimes gorgeous and grown-up, sometimes anxious and juvenile. She makes Gilda's boldest adventures plausible, but a daddy's-little-girl aspect gives credibility to her insecurities.
The film has a sense of life lived and observed with care. It makes the future works of its writer-director and star worth looking forward to."

- Marjorie Baumgarten
Austin Chronicle
"Writer-director Myra Paci makes a strong feature filmmaking debut with this understated story about a recent college graduate who deals with her father's death by seeking out the movie star (Noth) with whom she has become obsessed. Armed with only her mini-DV cam, some vague aspirations of getting into filmmaking, and a burning anger caused by her post-mortem discovery of her father's extramarital affair, Gilda Mattei (Pratt) heads to New York to pursue her dreams. Confabulating impressions of her father and the movie star, Gilda adopts the identity of her father's mistress, meets her idol, and discovers that images are merely slippery shards of half-truths. Relative newcomer Pratt delivers a confident performance in this film bolstered by an array of good work."

- Nate Berne
Willamette Week
"Director Myra Paci crafts a structurally innovative film, told sometimes through her own lens and sometimes through Gilda's handheld camera...Pratt herself is shimmering and magnetic. The father-daughter tension is tensely sentimental, and a limo/hotel seduction sequence is both creepy and compelling."

- Katie Shimer
Portland Mercury
"A college-aged Audrey Tautou look-alike deals simultaneously with the death of her father and her downright obsession with an actor played by Chris Noth (the hottie who plays Big on Sex and the City). She buys a video camera to document her father's last days, and also to make tapes of herself to send to the actor. After her father kicks the bucket, she heads to New York for some downtime and then ends up chasing Chris Noth around, pretending to be a journalist. A sweet and surprisingly realistic depiction of young confusion that you can't help but love."

New York Magazine
"We like…Searching for Paradise, Myra Paci’s tale of a beautiful, depressed girl’s obsession with a vain insincere movie star (Chris Noth).”

- Brooke Holgerson
The Boston Phoenix
"Boston native Myra Paci’s film is two parts coming-of-age story and one part Hollywood satire…Chris Noth has great fun playing the self-involved, pretentious star, and Susan May Pratt is touching as a young woman confused and consumed by grief."

- Paul Malcolm
Los Angeles Film Festival
"Few films dare explore the emotional ties between father and daughter with the intimacy and intensity of writer-director Myra Paci’s powerful debut feature.The searing gaze of Paci’s camera never flinches as the aching, vulnerable Gilda opens herself to waves of humiliation and grief. Paci and her razor-sharp cast work without a safety net in a frank, uncompromising film about a dreamer who crashes headlong into life’s harsher truths."

Citylink/Fort Lauderdale
"Compelling performances and a quirky, true-to-life script distinguish this unusual take on coping with grief and coming of age. When a teenage girl’s beloved father dies, she becomes obsessed with a movie star, played with blasé charm by Noth (Mr. Big on HBO’s Sex and the City). As the besotted Gilda, Pratt is the picture of misdirected passion and youthful awkwardness when she connives to meet Mr. Not-So-Wonderful on a movie set. This is a bracingly original film that offers no easy answer."