Destin Cretton’s Short Term 12 has an earnest verisimilitude that’s nearly undercut by plotting
neatly organized with hidden-in-plain-sight exposition, dramatic payoffs, and
impeccable structure, each moment building expertly on the last with character
arcs dovetailing oh-so-neatly. Set in a group home for at-risk kids, the film
follows the routine of Grace (Brie Larson, in a remarkable performance of
considerable poise and easy charm), a young woman who is helping these troubled
teens out of an honest desire to help, and as a way to work through memories of
her own troubled upbringing. The place itself is achingly convincing with a
charming collection of struggling teens suffering from a variety of
circumstances and emotional afflictions. The employees, mostly nice
twentysomethings portrayed appealingly by John Gallagher, Jr., Rami Malek, and
Stephanie Beatriz, are tough but compassionate, eager to be friendly with their
wards, but quick to get serious and severe if necessary.
The main trouble kid is a new inmate, an abused teen girl
(Kaitlyn Dever, a strong performance in a film of great young actors) who
becomes Grace’s special case. She feels like she understands her more than
anyone because - wouldn’t you know it? – she has been in her shoes. Cretton’s
screenplay is so deft and polished that I wished it would step back and
breathe, letting the great setting and hugely talented ensemble relax and
settle into the film without being pulled along by plotting with obvious
signposts and predictable symbolism. It easily generates such a strong, emotional
impact through the cast and setting that I only wish that power arrived with as
much unforced ease in the plotting. I realize it may seem a minor complaint
that the film is too transparently well written for its own good, but it’s a
frustration of mine in this case nonetheless.
In You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet, a French
playwright’s assistant calls the man’s closest actor friends – real French
stars like Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny, Lambert Wilson, and Michel Piccoli playing themselves –
to inform them that their old pal has died. They’re called to one of the man’s
mansions, gathered in a darkened screening room, and shown footage from a
rehearsal in an empty warehouse of a humble new production of his Eurydice. Those gathered have performed
this play before at one time or another, and as the evening stretches out,
memory and screen merge. They act out their old parts, doubling dialogue,
inserting themselves into the conversation, moving into an imagined dreamscape
of remembered or present-tense performance with dramatically lit sets and deliberately
phony CGI backdrops, twisting back into their seats, smiling warmly at one
another. The formality of the words and loose playfulness of the imagery
creates a fun tension, as does the richly appointed home stretching across the
wide screen and the smaller frame-within-the-frame
play-within-the-play-within-the-movie’s humbler, scrappy production. It’s mischievously
esoteric.
Cinema has the ability to reflect our lives back at us,
provoking warm memories, deeply held feelings and truths. These artists are
called back into their Eurydice characters,
and into the memory of their dead friend by nothing more than the dramatic
circumstances of sitting together in the dark, watching a flickering image
projected before them. Humans may be mortal, but if we’re lucky we live on
forever in the emotions sitting ripe for the feeling within art. That this
spellbindingly experimental and intimately heartfelt film is a product of an
old master, 91-year-old Alain Resnais, who brings together his mesmerizing
hypnotic symbolic abstraction (a la 1961’s Last
Year at Marienbad), sharply observed acting, and giddy, playfully dreamy
imagery (like his 2009 film Wild Grass),
is once more a welcome sign that great artists can retain their sense of vitality. Here is a man,
like the playwright in his film, who will live on in his art, forever calling
forth an audience to see if anyone still cares.
No comments:
Post a Comment