DCIFF, If You Please
The DC Independent Film Festival kicked off last night at the UDC campus. Here's a look at three films playing there this weekend (all films showing in the UDC auditorium, bldg. 46):
Intellectual Property (81 min. -- Sunday, March 4, 6:55 p.m.)
Intellectual Property, from director Nicholas Peterson, is a grimy paranoiac thriller that should seem familiar to fans of Dark City, Pi and Memento. Set in a claustrophobic McCarthyite society that could be the past or future, the film follows the story of Paul, a child prodigy who mentally unravels as he flees those who would betray him and steal his revolutionary inventions.
The cast boasts a few easily-recognizable faces. Richard Riehle and Kathryn Joosten are on hand in small roles, adding an air of familiarity. But most recognizable is Christopher Masterson (of Malcolm In The Middle fame), who plays Paul. Hiding behind coke-bottle glasses and a nerded-up voice, it's hard to fault Masterson's commitment to the role. But his appearance and vocal mannerisms make him come off as an ungodly Doogie Howser / Emo Philips hybrid, which works about half the time and is distracting for the rest of it. Rounding out the cast is Lyndsy Fonseca, who seems raw but charismatic and lovely as the female lead. Although her character is somewhat shallow and unbelievable, the role suffers more from writing than performance.
Unfortunately, the subpar writing isn't limited to Fonseca's character. The production of Intellectual Property is just as slick as you'd expect from a director with a visual effects background like Peterson's, but that experience doesn't pay off in the script, which he co-wrote with Hansen Smith. As a result the movie is heavy-handed, pocked with plot holes and occasionally downright silly. Worst of all, it fails to provide the genuinely ambiguous atmosphere of paranoia that's essential to the sort of psychological thriller that the film aspires to be. When it isn't being undercut by not-that-funny jokes, Paul's mental disintegration is surprisingly clear-cut — until, of course, the inevitable twist ending, which makes very little sense at all.
Still, Intellectual Property is indisputably a well-made movie; one gets the sense that if it was cut differently its makers could have a fine film on their hands.
Baby Blues (95 minutes -- Saturday, March 3, 9:45pm)
Ever wonder what it would look like if David Gordon Green directed a horror film? Neither did we. Lars Jacobson & Amardeep Kaleka's Baby Blues begins with great promise. They mine the same territory as Green, filming a small economically depressed sliver of the rural south with loving and slightly abstract care. Their camera floats in and out of focus through a family of six, depicting an idyllic day that belies the reality of the decaying machinery all around, and of the decaying mind of Mom, who is suffering from postpartum depression so severe it makes Andrea Yates look like June Cleaver. When the amiable, if slightly neglectful, truck driving Dad heads out on a trip, Mom snaps. Severely.
Unfortunately, the beautiful visuals, which continue even after things take a darker turn when night falls, are about all that Baby Blues has going for it. To begin with, the title seems inappropriately flippant considering that the mother spends most of the movie chasing her under-10-year-old children around with a meat cleaver spouting bad, cliched one-liners. And what starts out feeling like a quietly thoughtful indie drama turns quickly into a by-the-numbers slasher flick, only with even less attention given to character and exposition than your average Friday the 13th installment. Parallels with The Shining also abound, and by the time the filmmakers lock Mom in the bathroom and slavishly quote Kubrick's famous angle on Jack Nicholson locked in the pantry, even the most casual horror audience probably saw it coming. The ending throws in a cruel twist that may or may not be a snide statement on the Yates case, but most of the audience will be hard-pressed to care by that point. (Ian Buckwalter)
Silences (20 minutes -- Sunday at 2:30 p.m.)
In the short documentary Silences, Director Octavio Warnock-Graham probes his family for their knowledge and feelings concerning his bi-racial history. Though intended to be a poignant look into the secrets we keep from those we love, Warnock-Graham's very short journey (the film is about 20 minutes) to find his African-American father gets twisted into some sort of crusade to shame his mother for not affirming his "identity" as a "black man." The result is a cross between a Very Special Maury Povich and a series of Daily Show-esque interviews gone terribly wrong.
Warnock-Graham tells his story through conversations with his white family members and cut-aways illustrating the stereotypical small-mindedness in the midwestern town where he was raised (he records getting pulled over by a policeman because of a report describing his van as "suspicious"). We can understand his frustration at being harassed as a child — though this doesn't exactly seem to be the result of Warnock-Graham not knowing his racial history, per se. But the mild crucifixion of his family on film — all of whom sincerely interview that they love him immensely and that his background never mattered to them — doesn't seem a fair response to the deep bitterness he carries from his mother never telling him the race of his father. In fact, the only people creating emotional divides in this story are the director himself and bigoted people in his town, and when Warnock-Graham asks about his father and stares stoney-faced at his mother until he actually makes her cry on screen, or completely flusters his grandmother after she's repeatedly said that he's her favorite grandson, it's not the director for whom you'll have sympathy. One wonders if Warnock-Graham might be happier if he simply took a minute and focused on what he does have, and not just what's missing.
Though, the film might be worth it if only to witness the most appallingly uncomfortable non sequitur this writer has heard in a long, long time. You'll know it when you see it. (Heather Goss)