Too Late plays out like a late-night visit to the Luxor; you’re taken in by a dizzying roulette of lights, sounds, bells and whistles, and by the time it’s all over, you’re left wondering if the fun was worth the scalding shower you’ll need to wash off the scuzz.
The film, divided into five distinct segments, is like a slot machine of filmic tropes, noir visuals, and unleashed movie geek fixations. These are all terms of endearment, but how much enjoyment you’re in for is about equal to your gut reaction to any one of those word pairings. If restraint is what you’re after, look elsewhere. This is a film that cannot be considered separately from its flourishes, nor indeed from its distribution. First-time director Dennis Hauck has seen to it not only that his project be released on 35mm, but that it will only be shown that way. Bless whoever produced this thing; how you escaped the straight jacket is beyond me.
The segments, arranged in a non-linear order, piece together into a fragmented mystery involving a P.I. (played by John Hawkes, no less), the death of a young girl, and more seedy locales than you can wave a warrant at. The plot itself can’t help but feel a bit incidental at first, not much more than a vehicle for the visuals, but think again. Pay attention to the ways in which the chapters illuminate each other without ever breaking out of their own self-contained units. They don’t weave together a story in the traditional sense as much as they contain details that gradually contextualize what once seemed scattered and disparate. As I walked out of the theater, I found myself admiring it more and more.
Much press has been made of the staging of the movie’s five chapters, and it’s more than deserved. Each one was filmed in a single uninterrupted shot, all in colors as full-blooded as any I’ve seen in a movie. That kind of formalism can wear out its welcome pretty quickly, but rather then viewing the constraints of his single-take approach as handicaps, Hauck pushes them in exciting, imaginative ways. There are two moments in particular that exemplify this: a shot early on in which the camera zooms in on a far-away balcony only to split down the middle, allowing for a second “cheat” shot to fill half of the frame with important information in closeup; and a moment in which a flashback is projected onto a car window during a heavy exchange so as to dodge the need for cutting. It’s this giddy overripeness of style that proves to be the film’s greatest asset. If by chance Brian De Palma gets to see this film, he may start wonder why he doesn’t make this kind of picture anymore.
You might have noticed that I haven’t made much mention of the film’s script. I wish I could tell you I was saving the best for last. The movie is a technical marvel driven by great actors having a lot of fun, but when they open their mouths to speak their dialog, the flow is broken and the manner starts to reveal itself. The words become movie words and the characters become movie people; the whole thing begins to strain credulity. Perhaps that was idea. I recalled the first time I saw David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, how quaint and smalltime pastiche-like that dialog sounded in the beginning, but as it went along, I began to see the purpose of it. Here, an otherwise human story is consistently undercut by language that feels lifted from another, far less ambitious work.
Even more troubling, the film’s clumsy handling of its secondary characters leads to moral grey areas it might have otherwise avoided. There are quite a few barely-clothed-to-unclothed women in this story–– strippers, trophy wives, nymphomaniacs, the whole gallery–– and the degree to which their skin is justified depends on how convinced you are by their crumbling psychologies. In one instance, an almost comically distraught woman walks to answer the door with nothing on from the waist down. How she got to that point is almost impossible to buy, on a performance level and otherwise. Moments like this aren’t helped been early scene featuring two leery hipster types admiring a woman from afar. No, I’m not slinging claims of misogyny or sexism, and I don’t doubt the purity of the filmmakers’ intentions. But when audiences aren’t sold on something, their minds can wander to some pretty accusatory places.
As a firecracker to be dropped down the industry mineshaft, Too Late does the job brilliantly. The ways in which it was staged, filmed, and distributed are all calls to arms, challenges to all struggling filmmakers to dream bigger, leap farther, and see their vision through to the bitter end. For that reason, it’s worth seeing. But I owe it to you to tell the whole truth, and judging the thing as a piece of storytelling, I would be lying if I told you there aren’t areas in which it comes up short.
Too Late is playing at Sundance Cinemas Sunset Five in West Hollywood starting today.
Spencer Moleda is a freelance writer, script supervisor, and motion picture researcher residing in Los Angeles, California. His experience ranges from reviewing movies to providing creative guidance to fledgling film projects. You can reach him at: [email protected]