Musical Chairs (film)
| Musical Chairs | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Susan Seidelman |
| Produced by | Janet Carrus and Joey Dedio |
| Written by | Marty Madden |
| Starring |
Leah Pipes E. J. Bonilla Priscilla Lopez Laverne Cox Auti Angel |
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Release date
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Running time
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102 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Musical Chairs is a dance film starring Leah Pipes, E. J. Bonilla, Auti Angel, Laverne Cox, and Priscilla Lopez, and directed by Susan Seidelman. It is a romance involving a couple who participates in wheelchair ballroom dancing. In development for eight years before it was finally made, the film played at several festivals starting in 2011, including the . It was released on March 23, 2012. It played only a week in New York City, where it was entirely filmed, but as of March 30, 2012, opened in other locations in platform release. It premiered on cable TV (HBO) in December 2013.
The story takes place entirely in New York. Armando (E. J. Bonilla) works part-time at his parents' restaurant and is also a custodian at a dance studio, where he secretly practices dance moves. He befriends the beautiful Mia Franklin (Leah Pipes), a dancer who is having a relationship with the studio's owner Daniel (Philip Willingham). She catches Armando dancing alone, likes what she sees, gives him a few tips, and they dance together briefly, but are discovered by Daniel. Trying to avoid an awkward situation, Mia leaves. When Armando realizes that Mia has left her scarf behind, he calls out to her from the studio's second floor window.
On the sidewalk below, Mia turns to cross the street, when she struck by a taxi and rendered a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down. Upon learning of this, Daniel jilts her. Armando tries to boost her confidence and persuades her and other disabled people in the local rehabilitation center, including a "punky" Latina, Nikki (Auti Angel) and a wounded Iraq-war veteran, Kenny, (Morgan Spector) to enter a wheelchair ballroom dancing competition. Despite the opposition of his mother (Priscilla Lopez), Armando and Mia gradually fall in love and enter into a relationship, while Armando's uncle Wilfredo (Nelson Landrieu) falls in love with Chantelle (Laverne Cox), a disabled trans woman at the rehab center. Before the competition, Armando's mother, who has been maneuvering to get Armando hooked up with the beautiful Rosa (Angelic Zambrana), does her best to undermine (even to the point of "casting spells") the relationship between him and Mia, which has become sexually intimate by now. But Rosa understands, and generously breaks off with Armando.
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