What’s to become of the Friday Film Review? After all, movie theaters have been shuttered due to the coronavirus outbreak.
However, when the going gets tough, the tough get streaming! Mark Harrington surveyed his on-line options, and has this week’s Review.
Courtesy of the “Early Releases” virtual shelf in the Apple TV Movies section, this week’s film is International Falls, starring Rachel Harris and Rob Huebel. Winning several jury awards at small film festivals, International Falls is the directing debut of Amber McGinnis, a writer and theater artist whose passion is fueled by the truth and authenticity of her storytelling. The film is based in the northern snow bound region of the Minnesota-Canadian border, in a town with a population of 6,424 –if they counted on a summer day during a pie festival. In the dead of winter, its Main Street looks like our historic district on quarantine, only with a bigger bear statute- Smokey the bear. This is a place where sweaters reign over fashion, friends still buy each other used books, and hotel lounges only get acts you’ve never heard of. So when Dee, a hotel clerk, discovers her husband is cheating on her, she dives head first into the path of a traveling comedian currently booked in her hotel bar. But what she doesn’t know is that the caustic jester is going through his own anti-comedic catharsis, so she just doubled down on being trapped in crisis rather than finding her escape hatch. The acting is raw; realism to the point of awkwardness. Ms. McGinnis stays true to her passion and delivers a portrait of mid-life crisis with pure honesty and at times piercing dialogue. In the vocabulary of the old Sundance Film Festival guide, the synopsis might read: “Poignant, original narrative on adult trauma; refreshingly nonjudgmental; and daringly acted delivering heart felt humor in crisis.” For most listeners, that means run away.
So, on my ski trail rating system, International Fall earns my new, qualified OFF-PISTE ski trail rating. Like skiing in the trees on a non-powder day, this film is experts only. If you’re willing to hike and shop for a few good turns in the honestly written script and clever use of the origins of comedy, you might conclude the effort was at least better than working. So who would like this film? Well, if you are say a writer/improv groupie/festival volunteer stuck with a cancelled SXSW ticket who just got laid off from your day job, and you feel deprived of weird, independent films to the degree you’re lying around thinking, “Hey, I’m in the mood for a slow, dark, quiet film with self-loathing on the scale of Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere or Lost in Translation but only if it were like in Minnesota with comedians who actually weren’t that funny- yeah like The Secret Lives of Dentists meets Obvious Child only set in Fargo with really sad people.” So if you’re that cinephile or a furloughed psychiatrist who due to cancellations of all non-emergency clients really misses the day to day stories of your clinically depressed clients, this film is for you. On the other hand, do not mix this virtual depressant with severe anxiety attributed to COVID 19 isolation, or if you are the patient who was forced to cancel psychiatric counseling. Instead, I’d recommend trying the John Hughes multi-pack which gets you three feel-good comedies for $5.99.
International Falls is not rated but would be rated R for language, triple awkward sex acts, middle-aged intimacy in crisis, excessive despair, despondent stand-up, and a comedian who mines her internal truths to share the humanity of salvaging small, wonderful doses of hope and humor stumbling through life.
This is Mark Harrington for KPCW’s Friday Film Review.
