SUNDANCE LONDON 2013 - Day 2 - TOUCHY FEELY

Lynn Shelton's TOUCHY FEELY is a patient quiet film about deeply felt or resisted emotions.  I suffered through the slow-paced first hour of its slight run time, but came to love that aspect in retrospect as it paid off with a wonderfully cathartic crescendo in its final 20 minutes.  

At first glance, the story seems simple - even trite.  A family - brother, sister, the brother's daughter - quietly suffer their emotional crises in isolation.  The brother and sister take ecstasy,  while the daughter listens to a heartfelt, and suddenly, we have emotional breakthrough.  

What gives the movie a depth that belies this premise are the strong performances from all the major characters, and a particularly well crafted denouement.  Josh Pais is particularly impressive as the brother, Paul, a middle aged dentist afflicted with desperate awkwardness and rigidity.  A chance occurrence leads him to question his ability to heal, and opens him up to Allison Janney's character, and some of the most wonderful quiet humour comes from seeing this deeply unconventional man thrown into the world of the unconventional.  There's a short tour de force scene where Paul contemplates taking the pill.  There's no dialogue: you get everything you need from Josh Pais' physicality. It's wonderful to watch.

I also particularly liked Ellen Page's performance as the daughter, Jenny.  The character of the caring girl to guilt ridden to admit she wants to go to college, suffering too from unrequited love, goes against type for Page, who has previously only played feisty, witty girls.  Here she is so repressed and bashful as to be literally pathetic and its her catharsis that anchors the superb final twenty.

Which brings me to Shelton and her collaborators.  There's something quietly wonderful about the delicacy with which they weave together Tomo Nakayama's songs, the intimate visuals, and the final scenes to relate the emotional opening up of the characters at the end.   If only there had been a little greater urgency or economy on the opening sections, this could have been a truly great film.

TOUCHY FEELY has a running time of 88 minutes. The movie played Sundance 2013 and will be released in the USA on September 6th.

Sundance London 2012 - SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED

I guess it was a sure bet.  Any movie based on a cutesy internet meme (see above graphic) was gonna rub me up the wrong way.  SAFTEY NOT GUARANTEED is the kind of hipster, quirky, indulgent comedy that I hate.  In fact, even calling it a comedy is a stretch given that it peddles the gentlest of gentle comedy.  I only laughed out loud three times, so on that basis it fails the Wittertainment 5-Laughs rule.  I predict that this will end up like last year's lauded hit, LIKE CRAZY. That was another movie the indie community loved and I hated. It too ended up in a bidding war at Sundance only to fail at the box office.

The problem with the film is that everything about it is so contrived that goofy that there's nothing to relate to - no point of entry unless you're also a wannabe oddball hipster.  It also contains precious few proper jokes (as mentioned above), and uneven tone, as it skirts past various genres. I blame Derek Connolly's pretentious script and Colin Trevorrow's lacklustre direction.  Performances are mostly so-so.  Aubrey Plaza (PARKS AND RECREATION) does her snarky, moody thing, but predictably melts when she meets Mark Duplass' oddball paranoid wannabe time-traveller.  They meet up because she an intern at a magazine and her boss Jeff is faking interest in the madcap scheme so as to write a funny story on the guy.  Jake M Johnson provides the only real laughs as Jeff, nicely playing against the "nice Nick" character in THE NEW GIRL.  As for Karan Soni's Arnau, it's nice that we people of Indian origin are starting to get more airtime in movies, but does it always have to be a clichéd geeky hard-working student? I'm starting to get offended.

SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED played Sundance 2012 where Derek Connolly won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. It also played Sundance London. It will play SXSW 2012 and will be released in the USA on June 8th.