Josh Bell
This week’s low-profile VOD releases feature guest appearances from Peter Bogdanovich in a Nevada hotel and Frederick Wiseman in a Paris strip club, along with found-footage scares, crime comedy, and a unique cure for writer’s block.
Life of Belle (VOD February 2): A more straightforward take on similar subject matter to experimental horror sensation Skinamarink, writer-director Shawn Robinson’s found-footage film also makes the best of its limited resources, with mixed results. Robinson casts his own family members as a family whose superficial suburban tranquility is destroyed by the strange behavior of the unnamed wife and mother (Sarah Mae Robinson). When her husband (Matthew Robinson) leaves town on a business trip, the mother seems to lose her grip on reality, talking to an unseen entity and making odd demands of her children Link (Zachary Robinson) and Belle (Syrenne Robinson). Belle is an aspiring YouTuber, which accounts for her inclination to record everything, and much of Life of Belle consists of believably inane content for a kid’s YouTube channel (making slime, collecting worms). The movie is so effectively mundane that it’s often tedious, and the mother’s demonic possession and/or descent into madness becomes secondary to the kids’ manic distress, which is more exhausting than creepy. Grade: C+
Ghostwritten (VOD February 9): When writer Guy Laury (Jay Duplass) shows up for his residency on the isolated Nantucket Island, it appears that he may have stumbled into a Wicker Man-type situation. The locals all stare at him, and they often speak in ominous, cryptic pronouncements. The vacation home owned by Guy’s publisher, where he’s been sent to finally finish his long overdue second book, is probably haunted, and the bartender and pilot (Kate Lyn Sheil) who brought him to the island has a vaguely sinister presence to her. For much of its running time, Ghostwritten gets by on that abstract weirdness, with jumbled sound design that makes its elliptical dialogue sometimes difficult to discern, and black and white visuals that occasionally give way to flashes of color. Eventually, writer-director Thomas Matthews offers an explanation for all the mysterious occurrences, in a rush of poetic exposition that maintains the eerie vibe while adding disturbing resonance to Guy’s predicament. Grade: B
Marmalade (VOD and select theaters February 9): It takes a lot of audacity and ingenuity to pull off the climactic twist that writer-director Keir O’Donnell presents in his debut feature, and O’Donnell only delivers on the former. Nearly two-thirds of Marmalade feels like an exercise in baiting the audience, between the grating title character (Camila Morrone) and her seemingly moronic beau and partner in crime, Baron (Joe Keery). In jail, Baron tells his cellmate Otis (Aldis Hodge) the story of how he met Marmalade and was convinced to aid her in a bank robbery, ostensibly to pay for medication for his dying mother. The fact that Marmalade is an irritating, one-dimensional sexpot who inexplicably throws herself at Baron turns out to be a key plot point, but that doesn’t make it any less infuriating to watch Morrone and Keery spout faux-clever dialogue in strained Southern-ish accents. O’Donnell’s flashy, hyperactive storytelling style comes off like a bad relic of the ’90s hipster-crime boom. Grade: C
My Sole Desire (VOD and Film Movement Plus February 9): It would be easy to dismiss this French erotic drama as mere titillation, at least initially, but director and co-writer Lucie Borleteau tells a sensitive and intelligent story within the provocative context of a Paris strip club. That doesn’t mean she skimps on the sensuality, though, and part of her movie’s appeal is that it allows all of its characters to be unabashedly sexy. Borleteau maintains a sex-positive tone without dismissing the real potential for danger, and the backstage hangout scenes resemble a glossier version of Lizzie Borden’s landmark Working Girls. The routines that Manon (Louise Chevillotte) and Mia (Zita Hanrot) perform are closer to a combination of burlesque and performance art than the typical American conception of stripping, and Borleteau emphasizes their artistry. The burgeoning romance between Manon and Mia is sweet but realistically complicated, and Chevillotte and Hanrot have easy, playful chemistry. This is a movie that has room for both graphic nudity and a cameo from documentary legend Frederick Wiseman. Grade: B+
Willie and Me (VOD and select theaters February 9): German actress Eva Hassmann’s love for Willie Nelson exceeds her filmmaking skills in her writing and directing debut. She plays Greta, a Munich housewife and lifelong Nelson fan who sells her husband’s car and takes off for Las Vegas (or stock footage thereof) to attend Nelson’s farewell concert. The idea that Nelson would ever willingly retire is just one of the far-fetched elements of this tacky, disjointed movie, which isn’t weird enough to succeed as a surrealist fantasy but also fails to deliver any meaningful emotion or character development. Hassmann’s apparent connections enabled her to cast Peter Bogdanovich (in his final onscreen appearance) as a hotel clerk, and to get Nelson to appear both as himself and as a mysterious drifter. The soundtrack includes numerous Nelson songs, and the closing credits feature live performance footage of Nelson and Hassmann singing a song they wrote together, which is more endearing and genuine than anything in the preceding movie. Grade: C
