Wake up, Beth: Writer/director Vivian Kerr plays a struggling single mum in ‘Scrap’.
Special note: In an effort to provide a better and more reliable service to independent filmmakers, this site will now aim to publish review bundles of independent films on the last day of each month.
This puts an end to the sporadic pattern thus far and will keep people who have submitted films for review from having to wait for an inordinate amount of time before a notice appears.
Committing to this schedule will also necessitate a switch in modus operandi from “finding time” to “making time” to view films.
(NB: Policy dictates that all films submitted for review are seen on a big screen in full audio, either through a home theatre set up or on an over-sized smart TV. Nothing is ever seen on a tablet, laptop or – Heaven forfend – a phone.)
Owing to an unexpected time crunch things haven’t gone precisely to plan with this first batch. Apologies. More reviews will be added in the next few days (including Step Back, Doors Closing, Suze, Love 2020 and From Ground Zero). All efforts will be made to stick to publication on the last day of each month from now on.
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Jim S
SCRAP ***1/2 (105 minutes)
Teetering on the verge of personal and professional collapse stands Beth, the beleaguered woman at the palpitating heart of writer/director Vivian Kerr’s touching, finely honed portrait of a single mother who seems like she’d love to have a complete nervous breakdown, if only she could schedule it in between the crises pock-marking her life.
Abandoned by her worthless partner at the first mention of pregnancy, Beth (Kerr) has also been dumped by her company and is living in her car, distressing facts she is keeping from her remarkably supportive brother Ben (Anthony Rapp) and his palpably disapproving wife Stacy (Lana Parrilla).
They’re a loving couple trying for a baby via IVF who are kindly looking after Beth’s daughter Birdy (Julianna Layne), a cheery child who is being mercifully shielded from the increasingly obvious reality that her mother’s prospects aren’t improving.
Swallowing her pride on a regular basis has become a survival necessity for Beth, something we can see tear across her face when she asks Ben if she can stay a while, just till she gets her new abode sorted.
Good-hearted to a fault, he at least pretends to believe her.
Though the film gets off to a somewhat shaky start, its deceptively light hue of its opening scenes promptly gives way to darkening dramatic shades as we watch the troubled Beth attempt to navigate her way through her thinly veiled state of destitution, fending off the soul-crushing realities of her life with varying degrees of denial.
Dialling up the gravitas in carefully measured increments, Kerr opts for honesty over sentimentality In her portrait of an acutely lovelorn, painfully lonely modern woman.
While we are invited to empathize with aspects of Beth’s plight Kerr avoids playing the victim card. Circumstances and bad luck might have bedevilled Beth to an extent, but she is also selfish and stupid, suffering from her own bad decisions.
In one punishing scene we witness Beth putting herself ahead of her daughter, landing her in the type of vulnerable position she swore she would never revisit. It’s tough to watch yet serves as testament to a filmmaker brave enough to acknowledge how character imperfections include traits that can be totally contradictory.
Very well photographed in the burbscapes of middle-class LA, Kerr’s portrait of a woman under pressure is buttressed by a triad of terrific central performances from Kerr, Parrilla – so good at blending vague contempt with genuine sympathy for her sister-in-law – and Rapp, who embodies decency and deep-seated sibling love without slipping into sainthood.
Delicately balanced so as to keep each from falling into cliche, they’re all believable and eminently relatable.
There are some sketchy moments when it feels as though the film wants to amp up the humour, yet Kerr largely maintains the focus where it belongs to deliver a satisfying and, most importantly, convincing final reel where hope is permitted to seep in after having been absent for most of the story.
Made in 2022, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that Scrap is Vivian Kerr’s first feature. It’s a singularly impressive first time at the plate.
The look of the piece, the well-rounded nature of the narrative and the standard of direction suggest otherwise; Kerr’s ability to hold shots and enrich simple moments with revealing nuance score repeatedly as among the film’s most enjoyable qualities.
On AppleTV
Here’s more info on the film and Vivian Kerr.
STEP BACK, DOORS CLOSING **1/2 (98 minutes)
Most meet-cutes last for a scene, sometimes less. In writer/director Carter Ward’s charming if discursive romantic two-hander, the meet-cute lasts the whole film as two attractive young strangers cross paths at night while in transit across a beautifully lit Washington, DC.
Ryan (Reilly Walters) has just returned home from a funeral when he runs into Julisa (Carmen Berkeley), in DC from LA for a young leadership conference.
In one of the many deft touches peppered across the film, Julisa is suffering from severe tech fail, unable to use her devices to contact her friend.
Seeing her suffering on the train, Ryan steps up offering to assist, first to locate her friend then as a guide to the city.
Through reams of naturalistic dialogue, we learn that both these 24-year-olds are going through their own versions of a quarter-life crisis.
For all her feminist shadings, Julisa has bailed from her postgraduate program, a decision filling her with regret, especially as it marks her as a poor example for others. She lacks direction even though she clearly doesn’t want for opportunity.
Ryan seems like he’s got it together but is also riddled with uncertainty; the supposed end of a four-year relationship looks like it might be rekindled via texts he gets from his ex – yet he has feelings for Julisa. What to do?
As the two feel each other out – mostly through words – their attraction grows as they peel back their emotional layers to reveal how suited they seem for each other.
With the clock ticking on their encounter, the film is a pleasant, amiable ramble about the buds of young love and all its variables.
But a ramble it is, no doubt accounting for too many moments where too little happens. A film of this nature and of such length – 98 minutes, which is very generous – shouldn’t have so much air in it.
The film itself seems to sense the strain, which might explain why the intimacy the pair share seems a tad forced, as though Ward felt the need to dial up the stakes to keep things simmering. Arguably it’s a misstep.
Also, Ryan and Julisa seem almost too amiable. Few people can exchange so much dialogue over so many hours and not find friction and points of contention on one or two fronts.
Even given the rules of attraction and their associated impulses, it might have served the characterizations better to have seen the two bristle a bit more.
That said, the performances from Reilly Walters and Carmen Berkeley are fabulous – breezy and natural, they buoy the film.
That’s not faint praise, either. One of the things that often hobble independent films are acting standards that are erratic, uneven or mismatched.
If there’s one aspect of Step Back, Doors Closing where Carter Ward scores a clean 10/10 it’s the work he elicits from his personable young leads. No signs of first-takeitis here.
Very few will see this film and not see how big a debt its premise owes to Richard Linklater’s 1995 romantic neo-classic Before Sunrise, in which two strangers (played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) talk all night while wandering through Vienna.
Nothing amiss with Step Back, Doors Closing being inspired by another film, only it wears the reference on its sleeve. The narrative template is too obvious, so the film never really cuts the cord to be its own thing.
Of course, those unfamiliar with Before Sunrise (or the subsequent chapters Before Sunset and Before Midnight) will have no such issue.
Here’s more info about the film, including its upcoming sessions at the Omaha Film Festival.
SUZE **1/2 (93 minutes)
A likeable though somewhat strained rom-com, Suze presents for our consideration an ultra-awkward odd-coupling between Suze (Michaela Watkins), a wronged middle-aged woman, and Gage (Charlie Gillespie), an air-headed teen seemingly modelled on Sean Penn’s Spicoli from 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
The set-up has Suze adrift in the white waters of mid-life. She is still recovering after having been abandoned five years earlier by former husband Alan (Sandy Jobin-Bevans), whose young new squeeze is pregnant.
And with her daughter Brooke (Sara Waisglass) going off to college, Suze faces the prospect of living as an empty nester. That is until Gage, who Brooke just dumped before heading off, moves in.
Watkins is a wonderfully adroit performer, so good at shading her comedic line delivery with dramatic hues – her phone pleas for her daughter to return her calls are golden – and her characterisation is solid.
Regrettably, the frisson between Suze and Gage doesn’t quite come off as well as writer/directors Dane Clark & Linsey Stewart clearly intended.
The mismatch dynamics are supposed to make the premise pop, only Gage is allowed to get away with too much, Suze’s responses often seeming out-of-character or out-of-place.
With Gage desperate to have Brooke back in his life the film has him and Suze head to her college. The sequence is too contrived and simply doesn’t work. Even in obviously heightened rom-coms one foot needs to remain planted in believability.
And despite his somewhat naive airhead charm, Gage can often be tough to like, making Suze’s reluctant and eventual liking of him hard to swallow.
Why, for instance, would she let him take down all the pictures of Brooke around the house without a word of protest? Or, indeed, insisting that he learn to deal?
There are some warm and funny conversational moments sprinkled throughout, and Watkins acquits herself very well – she’s easily the film’s chief asset – yet the rhythm of the romance is ultimately too haphazard, making the deliberately messy relationship a bit too hard to buy into.
On Prime (US only)
FROM GROUND ZERO ***1/2 (112 minutes)
As well-timed as it is well-executed, From Ground Zero harks from that most rarefied strata of non-fiction films – the anthology documentary.
We are taken via a variety assortment of 22 short films into the rubble and ruins of present-day Gaza where hapless but not hopeless Palestinians do what they can to survive.
The films are largely observational vignettes, with shadings of drama, a sprinkling of comedy and some inventive, if crude animation. (The pieces that make up the marionettes in the puppetry film is especially revealing.)
Still, the underlying theme is the tragedy and sheer scale of the disaster, the images presented painting a vivid mosaic of life amidst smashed cityscapes strewn with pancaked buildings and beaches carpeted by tent cities.
People hunt for water, run to drop zones as aid packages rain down by parachute and look for places to charge their phones. Distressing as it is to witness, there is also hope and music, with defiant calls for love and peace amidst the turmoil and sub-poverty living conditions.
Some of the images are startling: boys scoop up flour from a broken aid package, knowing how much sand they are also collecting; children complain of the constant buzzing of drones; people scratch away at pulverised concrete hunting for victims who are pressed into the rubble; a mother tattoos her kids’ names onto their limbs so they can be identified in case they are dismembered by a bomb.
Yet somehow the most affecting film shows an art student giving us a tour of her devastated home. Her artworks, so recently showcased with pride at an exhibition, lie scattered, covered in dust or destroyed.
Yet the real target of the bombing turns out to be her future. All her promise, all her potential lies shattered both in the husk of her home and amidst the debris where her university once stood.
From Ground Zero was submitted to this year’s Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category, but didn’t make the final cut. Pity.
LOVE, 2020 ** (80 minutes)
Though well-made and clearly well-researched, regrettably hardcore tennis fans are the ones most likely to get much out of this detailed recap of the Covid-affected 2020 US Open in New York City. Of most interest is the central segment about the way the tournament was reshaped by events to became more than a mere contest, but anyone outside the sport’s devoted fanbase is likely to find a good chunk of this American-made documentary a bit of a slog.
The film was directed by Jacqueline Joseph. For more on the film go here.
On Amazon Prime and British Airways worldwide