SXSW Review: David P. Zucker’s ‘Your Friend, Memphis’

deadline.com:

The challenges and vicissitudes of living with cerebral palsy are made quite clear in Your Friend, Memphis, a sympathetic, up-close documentary that traces a few years in the life of a young man whose teenage optimism about his prospects narrows considerably as time marches on.

It’s a poignant but ultimately tough tale that reflects a reality in which youthful hope almost inevitably gives way to the realization that, by one’s twenties, things are never going to get better, that life’s prospects decrease with age and the disappearance of family members and engaged helpers.

As upbeat and determined as the subject is in his youth, grim facts at a certain point are impossible to ignore.“If you all weren’t here filming me, I would be alone,” grins the often enthusiastic and generally personable Memphis DiAngelis, who was diagnosed at age one, is 5’3,” shuffles along with a pronounced awkward limp, has thick glasses, bad skin and a twisted right arm, and speaks clearly but in an exaggerated way marked by erratic cadences and slurred words that are sometimes sufficiently incomprehensible to warrant the subtitles that accompany his speech.At the outset, Memphis declares that he’s trying to figure out life’s purpose—aren’t we all?—but for him it’s an infinitely more formidable struggle.

In 2014, the youngster appeared in a Texas-shot film Loveland, which led to a few other gigs as an actor and/or assistant. But the flurry of activity was short-lived, and this documentary by David P.