Weird Indie Films

"White Bird in a Blizzard"
starring: Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Christopher Meloni, Shiloh Fernandez, Angela Bassett, Gabourey Sidibe, Thomas Jane
written and directed by: Gregg Araki

I have liked a few of Araki's earlier films (re: Nowhere, Splendor, in particular) and I will include this one, his newest indie film, as one that I enjoyed because he takes an interesting story and puts his own spin on it (most of the time his films get too convoluted for its own good. It's almost like he wants to test our patience and enjoyment of films. He has been known to work with more notable actors and actresses, putting them in roles that test their otherwise likability, as they are known in the mainstream. Think actors like: Rose McGowan, Parker Posey, Ryan Phillippe, Heather Graham, Mena Suvari, and Kathleen Robertson. For this film, his latest "victim" is Shailene Woodley, whom many would consider a likable, young, up-and-coming actress with a down-to-earth, girl-next-door look to her.

Shailene Woodley plays Kat, a teenage girl returning home to suburbia from college on break. It's 1988 and Araki choices specifics about the era that seem important to him, so that we know how much he knows about the obscurity in his choices. Kat is 17 years old and she is apparently going to struggle with the transformation from awkward teen to seductress, all while centered in the disappearance of her mother, whom she comes home to find having a nervous breakdown in her bedroom. Her mother, Eve (played magnificently by Eva Green) isn't around for much of the film, but when she is on screen, Green demands and commands everyone's attention.

Kat is surprisingly unfazed by her mom’s disappearance. The cops send her to a therapist (Angela Bassett), whose consultations help Kat uncover clues within recent examples of her mother’s increasingly erratic behavior. Clearly, Kat isn’t the only one troubled by her recent transition from dumpy girl to desirable young woman. Sexually unfulfilled in a loveless marriage ( Christopher Meloni), Eve sees herself in Kat, not just envying her emerging good looks, but even going to so far as to openly compete with her daughter. For some reason, Kat has opted to give her virginity to the lughead next door, a chisel-chested Neanderthal named Phil. Kat could do much better, but hasn’t quite realized the extent of her newfound powers, which explains her bewilderment as she studies her own unfamiliar body before the bathroom mirror. It’s easy to be distracted by (and possibly even to dismiss) “White Bird” as a tarted-up Nancy Drew mystery without recognizing it’s a complex take on how teens must break away from their parents to become their own person. When the time comes to assert her own independence, Kat must symbolically eliminate the mother and seduce the father figure — which she does by coming on to the ultra-masculine Det. Scieziesciez (Thomas Jane). 

As the film closes, with the solutions to Kat's mother's disappearance, she seems to want to cling to her naivete, refusing to accept the truth about her parents. She's ready to become a woman, sexually speaking, but still wants to her the little girl her parents loved years ago. Mentally, she is still a child, so what kind of coming-of-age story is this, if not an incomplete one. 

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"The Scribbler"
starring: Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Garret Dillahunt, Michael Imperoli, Gina Gershon, Sasha Grey, Kunal Nayyar, Ashlynn Yennie, Billy Campbell, Eliza Dushku

Talk about a paper-thin story. Talk about convoluted messes. Talk about frustratingly confusing and pretentious. This film has it all, while having nothing at all. It goes nowhere with nothing and circles back around. Katie Cassidy tries her best to play the type of character seen in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" except it's so obvious a rip-off that you cannot help but feel sorry for her. Cassidy plays Suki, who is being questioned by a crusty old cop (Imperoli) looking to make good on his long career by solving a string of mysterious murders at a halfway house for the mentally and socially inept, which is where all the action takes place. Suki is released to this halfway house after undergoing a bizarre experimental treatment (called the Siamese Burn) which was developed by a well-intentioned scientist named Dr. Sinclair (Campbell). Suki suffers from multiple personalities, and the characters she meets in the halfway house are equally as strange. She also reconnects with an old flame named Hogan (Dillahunt), who happens to be the only man in the halfway house. She soon discovers that every girl he's slept with has subsequently fallen to her death from the top of the building, and she'll soon be next, if she doesn't solve the murder mysteries herself. She begins to wonder if her most enigmatic personality, known as The Scribbler, is the guilty party. Is her "true" personality Suki or The Scribbler? Is she a hero or a villain?

Early scenes suggest a moody sci-fi thriller, populated by quirky side characters including Cleo (Gina Gershon), a sex addict who treats her pet boa constrictor like a fashion accessory; Emily (Ashlynn Yennie), a rail-thin resident who wanders the halls in the buff due to her fear of clothing; and a talking bulldog (voiced by Michael Berry Jr.) who may or may not be a figment of Suki’s fragmented mind. But they prove to be little more than eccentric dead ends taking up space in the woefully undernourished origin story that overtakes the narrative.

Misguided pretensions in the dialogue aside, Suits’ filmmaking clearly isn’t aiming for high art, instead taking its primary aesthetic cues from ’90s rock videos and stray anime influences with an incoherent climactic fight scene staged on a rain-drenched rooftop is a particularly low point. At least Suki and Hogan’s bathed-in-blue softcore sex scene could guarantee “The Scribbler” some late-night cable play.

Cassidy sinks her teeth into a role with precious little meat on the bone, proving she deserves a better vehicle for her intrepid star turn. (Delivering a line as ludicrous as “The elevator hates me, there’s a lunatic loose on the stairs, I’m never getting out of this building alive!” with deadpan wit is no easy task. Alas, the tone-deaf Suits doesn’t share his leading lady’s skill at mixing campy comedy with straight-faced determination.) Among the generally squandered supporting cast, Dillahunt hits some pleasing notes despite playing a clueless cipher, and Michelle Trachtenberg seems to be having fun vamping it up as a dark-haired femme fatale who takes a particular disliking to Suki.

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"Open Windows"
starring: Elijah Wood, Sasha Grey, Neil Maskell
written and directed by: Nacho Vigalondo

What can be said about Elijah Wood's career trajectory of late? He has certainly made his adulthood career an interesting path, with roles in the stellar, albeit confusing FX show "Wilfred" and then in indie films like this one and "Maniac," most notable. It's like he wants us to forget what may have truly made him as famous as he has been: Frodo from "The Lord of the Rings." I admire him for this path though. 

Nacho Vigalondo knows how to push our cultural buttons, and Open Windows works as both a crackerjack suspenser and an intellectually chewy meta-commentary on our current fascination with and engulfment by our digital devices. Like a 21st century reframing of Hitchcock’s Rear Window, Vigalondo’s newest is all about voyeurism, except these days you can never be completely sure that what you’re looking at on the screen of your phone/tablet/laptop/GPS isn’t also staring back at you. Heck, there might even be a psychopath on the other end.

Open Windows’ action takes place entirely within those screens. Wood is Nick Chambers: a buttoned-up, milquetoast fan of steamy actress Jill Goddard (Sasha Grey of The Girlfriend Experience and her notable porn career). Sitting hunched over his laptop in a hotel room overlooking downtown Austin, Nick is initially under the impression that he’s won a contest and is going to have dinner with the none-too-obscure object of his desire. No such luck. In short order, Nick is contacted online by the mysterious Chord (Maskell), who seems to know all about Nick, Jill, and how to hack into just about anyone’s anything especially when it come to Ms. Goddard.

Vigalondo has fun juggling the various digital points of view. 

Open Windows has plenty to say about both the death of privacy and the dominion of the always-connected digiverse we now inhabit.

Watcher beware.