2.5/5
You don’t know true heartbreak until you’ve watched a bad film in the same room as the people who made it. After being dragged through the mud by the movie itself, we sit through a Q&A listening to the filmmakers explain to a packed audience what their mess of a film was intended to be about. We’re treated to an elaboration that’s heartfelt, intelligent, and nuanced. How come those qualities so rarely make their way into the final product?
Lovesong is not a terrible film, but as I sat through it, I often wished it was. A truly bad film provokes you into throws of passion and anger; this one simply lies there stiff as a drowned squirrel. It’s on a constant verge of diving into subjects ripe for compelling drama — depression, homosexual attraction to a close friend, being stranded in (and very much by) one’s own life and the circumstances that created it, raising a child by yourself— but not unlike the characters themselves, the film lacks commitment. It’s content to stand at the edge, squandering every opportunity its presented with and instead chases an indie ambience it doesn’t have the thematic meat to support. What we’re left with is a bit of a bore, a movie that seems more occupied with lingering on forlorn faces than exploring the people behind them.
Sarah (Riley Keough) is a single mother— well, not quite, but she might as well be. Her husband is constantly swept off by some business trip or another, almost as if he invents reasons to remain away from home. She is stricken with a depression that keeps her trapped in in the house. The only thing that brings light to her life is her young daughter, Jessie, played by director So Yong Kim’s actual daughter also named Jessie. But there are days when even that is too much, especially without the aid of her husband.
To console her, Sarah’s longtime friend Mindy (Jena Malone) pays her a visit from New York. Where Sarah is sullen and trapped, Mindy is free and never without bite, trying her best to lift her friend from the life she’s faced with. The two decide to go on a road trip together, but don’t be fooled; this films offers none of the pleasures of a road movie, firstly because the road trip ends after 30 minutes. During a night of drunken confessions, a small kiss is shared between them, and before it can be discussed, Mindy decides it’s time to leave. More than anything else, this moment is emblematic of one of the film’s most fatal flaws: every time it’s about to get juicy, it bails on us.
Years pass, and we find Sarah driving across the country for Mindy’s wedding. What could have been the perfect platform to return from that kiss years ago becomes a juggle of half-baked subplots, from Mindy’s mother to what appears to be the beginnings of her alcoholism. None of it comes to any satisfying fruition, nor does the movie take the chance to uncover what exactly Sarah thinks of what unfolds. We see in her face that she feels something, but the movie never tells us what.
I’m afraid to say the dialog doesn’t help matters. This is another film that a cinephile might describe as “impressionistic”, with many scenes improvised in an attempt to lend an organic rhythm to the story. It’s a bizarre thing — in movies and literature, meticulously crafted dialog suddenly sounds real, and conversations made up in the moment rarely ring true. I think that’s because written words, just like words real people really speak, are crafted with purpose and intent, communicating complex ideas, whereas improvisation tends to turn the real into the meandering.
I recall one scene in particular in which Sarah and Mindy can’t get Jessie to stop screaming on board a ferris wheel. In what I assume was intended to be a moment of joyous relinquishment, the two join in with screaming of their own. It seems as if it must serve some purpose, until you realize it doesn’t. You can hear the writer’s thought process: “Ah, this is the film’s first moment of triumphant catharsis”, not realizing that it’s like enduring a symphony of screeching orangutans. It’s a scene from which the movie never recovers, partly because it reveals all the wrong things — for the first time, you see how desperately the movie tries sell you on its realism without having any place of truth to pull from.
There is one good scene. Near the end of the film, Sarah and Mindy wander off into the forest right before the wedding. The two lay down next to each other and share a wordless, genuinely human moment that could have saved the movie if the script had taken the time to make something out of it.
To the filmmakers of the future, I ask of you one thing: write something robust. Please. By attending your film, your audience is placing its faith in you to deliver an unforgettable experience, a story that sizzles with vitality as much as it smacks of worldly truth. In its attempt to tell a story without first learning it, Lovesong feels neither vital nor true. As I scrolled through IMDB fact-checking myself, I noticed that Sarah’s husband is played by the great director Cary Fukunaga. I’m left to imagine what this material could have looked like in his assured hands.
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: www.spencermoleda.com
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]