So the first three films were all nominated for the Independent Spirit Awards this year (and all in the same category that honors ultra-indies that were made for 500,000 or less), but the fourth film should have been as well. Even though it wasn’t technically nominated, it sure captures the independent spirit.
Test…It’s about a gay male ballet dancer in San Francisco right on the even of when the AIDs crisis was about to take root. The title comes from the first AIDs tests being invented and taken. It hints around at that panic, but the film also makes the (slightly strange) decision to not really play that up, instead falling into a groove that is something close to a gay romantic-comedy with dramatic elements. It’s a light film about a serious subject, but not exactly bad, though I kept wishing for deeper insight into the main character. The presentation of this material is torn somewhere between artsy abstraction and plain-spoken realism, and I’m not sure the two styles really mesh. Grade: B-
Blue Ruin…A revenge story that follows a vagabond drifter’s attempts to avenge the murder of his parents once their killer is released, but that only pulls the killer’s family into the mayhem. I like the idea of a movie about blood feuds between rival backwoods families more than Death Wish-style vigilantism, but I wish the film had committed to that a little more instead of falling somewhere in between. The action is enjoyably low-key, but how could it not be on such a small budget? Still, I had the most mixed feelings about the lead character, who is played by one of the least memorable actors I’ve come across in recent memory (he looks like the dork cop on Brooklyn Nine Nine but less interesting). Putting him as the lead really hammers across the idea that we’re just watching a regular guy do thriller-movie stuff, and that’s great, but he’s about as compelling as wallpaper. And even though the film hopes to have a message about vengeance and violence and the cycle, blah blah, it never really feels like it believes it. In the end, violence is pretty cool (as displayed here) and the “villains” aren’t sympathized with enough, especially since the hero’s initial retaliation turns out to be wrong. Grade: B
It Felt Like Love…It’s about a young girl feeling the pressure to have sex, especially since her best friend is usually only a few feet away making out with her boyfriend. It does a good job of showing the tug-and-pull of teenage hormones (where endless hours can be spent making out, but drawing lines before actually getting to sex), but other than realism, there’s not a lot to this film really. It’s only 77 minutes long but still feels padded out with long, drawn-out shots of the ocean or mournful stares where the lead character doesn’t say anything. I do wish indie films would learn that if you have to keep showing your lead character walking somewhere to stretch out the runtime so you have a real movie and not a short film, then you might want to add more story to your story. Grade: B-
The Retrieval…The best of the lot, and should have been nominated. This is a micro-budgeted indie that somehow manages to convincingly portray 1864 during the Civil War. It never really feels like the production is cheaper than it should be, and I think such a downsized budget might actually help depict a battered, archaic war zone.
Anyway, it’s about a slave boy and his nasty uncle who work for a white bounty hunter to collect escaped slaves, and the boy’s conflicted feelings about turning in their latest bounty: a former slave who now represents the decency the boy has rarely seen in others. The opening scene shows the danger in trusting anyone at a time when neighbors could be considered enemies, and that echoes all the way until the end when even people on the same side keep getting split off into smaller and smaller groups. By showing a time when an act of kindness could be your undoing, this small-scale epic does as good a job as any in letting us inside the psychology of that period. Grade: A-