Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Cast: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Fred Durst
Have I Seen It Before: Nope. I’ve had a recent rash of catching all of the indie movies just as they are beginning to leave this year. I really need to get further ahead, although Circle’s smaller rooms do have their charms. I also need to eat less popcorn. It wouldn’t hurt to sleep more.
Did I Like It: And that should quality permeates the film, in a very strange way. The entire affair is positively Lynchian in its inability to be pinned down, and there’s at least one way to read the entire movie as if nothing other than watching some TV happened throughout the film, but for anyone who feels like the person living inside of them is different than the person everyone else sees, there’s plenty to chew on.
Normally, a film that threatens nothing happening is enough to make me turn my nose up at the whole affair, but this is different. The language the film uses is probably what interested me most. Nostalgia, and nostalgia subtly done permeates every inch of the film. From long, loving shots of a 1996 ballot (they may have only been long and loving in my own memory), high school décor blandly insisting students “carpe diem,” and VHS tapes as a way to connect with people*, this is speaking a language I understand, even if I am ultimately a guest in the conversation. This doesn’t even begin to dwell on the film’s fixation with a particular TV show languishing on the Young Adult Network, possessing an unearned reputation as “for girls,” and ultimately possessing a mythology far richer than it has any right to, without ever saying the name of the show they’re really hinting to.
*I was a little perturbed by this, as anyone knows you could have fit 6 hour-long episodes with commercials on a VHS tape, made all the worse by the realization that The Pink Opaque is a half-hour… I just now realized that the show may have been more akin to one of the Nickelodeon shows, given how cheesy it ended up being when characters sobered up and turned thirty.