From the Canadian-born filmmaker Thomas Burstyn comes a mediation on family and things “more reliable than love.” The documentary finds Burstyn’s odd-couple aunt and uncle – artist Yolanda Sonnabend and her scientist brother Dr. Joseph Sonnabend – living together in England. What enfolds is a tender sort of reality television show, except it is actually…
Initially seeming so personal, Montreal filmmaker Thomas Burstyn’s family examination Some Kind of Love gradually reveals itself to be a relatable documentary. His primary focus is his late mother’s eccentric stepsister, prolific London artist Yolanda Sonnabend. With echoes of Grey Gardens, Yolanda lives in a ramshackle London house with a posh address, packed with 50…
Thomas Burstyn’s documentary looks at first like an indulgent examination of his own family’s intimacy issues. But soon it blossoms into an emotionally charged investigation into the universal themes of familial love, ambivalence and obligation. Burstyn, a child of second world war refugees, declares early on that his first interest is his estranged brother, but…
Documentary filmmaker Thomas Burstyn used to visit London, England with his family as a young boy. There, he stayed at a posh home in St. John’s Wood, not far from Abbey Road Studios, where his step-aunt Yolanda Sonnabend lived. A few years ago, the Montreal native returned with his producer wife Sumner to that London…
The title of the documentary SOME KIND OF LOVE refers to to the unlikely love that exists between the two siblings, Yolanda Sonnabend and her brother Joseph. Despite their constant complaining about each other, Joseph says on camera that he cannot leave her as she cannot live on her own. He takes care of her…
The term “cinematic sleight-of-hand” is something of a misnomer. All cinema is a fake; a collection of still images that pretends to move. But something in Thomas Burstyn’s very personal documentary seems to call out for the term. It’s not that the filmmaker is being willfully duplicitous; just that as Some Kind of Love progresses,…
A documentary by Thomas Burstyn. Ghosts haunt the canopy of any family tree, and here they are so vivid, everyone can still see them. In Some Kind of Love, you can feel Thomas Burstyn’s need to capture them before they’re gone for good. With producing and writing help from his wife, Barbara Sumner-Burstyn, the busy…
Here is a review of Some Kind of Love by Jim Gordon on CTV – Skip to 3:48
