SXSW: Four Eyed Monsters

Next up: Four Eyed Monsters. The Slamdance pick that was getting lots and lots of praise. I went into this one hoping for good things. It starts of pretty interesting, showing the life of this for-hire video editor. Then he turns to the internet for love. Then it becomes like a feature version of Love Math, only creepier. The guy finds the girl, but doesn't talk to her, of course, instead he stalks her, taking photos of her. He emails her the photos and her natural reaction is to be flattered. Ok, ok, suspension of disbelief, alright, I'll try. It's gotten me past the horrible sets, so maybe just going with it will be ok. He agrees to meet her on the condition that they don't talk to one another, that no speaking is to take place, arguing that talking is what ruins things. They should communicate, yes, but they shouldn't talk. Arguing that the means of communication is more important than the message they meet up and write notes to each other. They write notes and try to reinforce their quirkiness. Then it goes nowhere. Just a bunch of them writing their notes saying how quirky they are, then she ships off to art school where they club the audience over the head saying how much their relationship is art.

Then comes the ending. They can't find a way to end it so they just start deconstructing their sets from the movie and put together the movie. Then it shows the guy on the phone getting his movie accepted to Slamdance. I thought that was absolutely classless and completely tacky. Just something about recreating it and putting it in the actual movie just really rubbed me the wrong way. I was very glad the movie was over. If you're looking to watch something about not talking, there's an episode of Seinfeld where Kramer doesn't talk - that's really good.
12:29:41 AM    comment []  trackback []

SXSW: Kissing on the Mouth

Kissing on the Mouth became the talk of the festival because it's write-up said it was an "Adults only" movie and the publicity still included a female nipple. This, right away, taught me a valuable lesson - always do both those things, regardless of the actual content of the movie, to get buzz and people to show up. Kissing on the Mouth was also lauded because it had a lot of nudity in it. A whole lot. The novelty wore off quickly. The basic plot of the movie, which was barely there, was that a girl started sleeping with her ex again, and nobody was happy with the situation, including them. The movie addressed this plot slowly, overlaying other parts with interviews of 20-somethings about issues such as marriage (which, had basically different people expressing the same sentiment). The movie was made for a song, shot on handheld DV and edited directly after shooting. For such a setup, I didn't find it edited particularly well. It constantly had punch in shots of feet, over and over again. Somebody would talk and we'd see their feet for a while. Punch-in shots are tricky to work, and even harder to do right. These didn't strike me as being done too terribly well. However, it was very well acted, using stumbling dialogue (uh's, um's, etc) with a sparse script that lead itself to a lot of improvised dialogue.

However, overall, the movie really didn't go anywhere. While I could agree with a lot of the sentiments expressed by the story and the interviews, I couldn't help but think that it was trying to be a lot more than what it was. I think they were trying to mesh narrative and documentary together, but it just didn't work, especially in comparison to Cavite and it's treatment of showing real stuff while in a fake story. Overall Kissing in the Mouth was boring. It was a big sprawl that just really didn't end up going anywhere, and was slow getting there. The nudity was mostly unnecessary and wasn't even handled particularly well. In the Q&A they said they didn't mean it to be particularly shocking - it wasn't, it was interesting for a bit, then quickly boring, just like the rest of the movie.
12:28:38 AM    comment []  trackback []