Director Crystal Moselle first met the long-haired Angulo brothers in Reservoir Dogs drag (shades and suits) as they enjoyed a rare outing on the streets of New York. Raised in seclusion by their dominating Peruvian father, Oscar, the boys had been home-schooled and sheltered from the world – one year, they didn’t leave their Lower East Side apartment at all. Instead, they learned about life through watching and restaging popular movies (The Dark Knight proves a transformative text), honing the performance skills which make them such camera-ready subjects for this revelatory yet admirably unsensationalist documentary.
Named after Hindu deities, the six boys (their sister is barely glimpsed on camera) prove easy company – attractive, articulate, and engagingly enthusiastic. Yet the monomaniacal presence of their father lends a darkness to the film (Capturing the Angulos would be a fitting subtitle), particularly as mother Susanne struggles to explain her husband’s isolationism. A sequence in which she connects with her own mother speaks volumes about the toll this removed life has taken on her.
Stranger still that Oscar’s avowed fear of worldly corruption does not extend to the movies which streamed into his fortressed home, their playful re-enactment bringing the full force of the law right to his front door. Since becoming a Sundance prize-winner in January, The Wolfpack has opened up new vistas for the Angulos; for them, and for debut feature-director Moselle, the world is now their oyster. Let’s hope that reality TV beckons for neither.
