- Written and directed by Jason Santo
- Starring
- Tina Krause
- Alecia Batson
- Roman Berman
- Kathy Nestor
- Jason Santo
- Produced by Jason Santo and Sheri Carter
So I look back at my review of Bent, Volume One, and yup — right there at the end, I go into my obligatory rant/plea for Jason Santo to stop making admittedly-accomplished short films and put all of his eggs in a feature film basket. No need for me to tread that ground again here.
Except there is, for different reasons. I was, shockingly, left a little disappointed with this installment of his short film compilation series. It just seemed to be more of the same of what we’ve already seen: technically accomplished and inventive, yes, but without a larger story to serve, all of the nifty storytelling techniques on display here lose their reason to be.
Libations! Libations!
Taking the shorts in order:
The Dinner isn’t meant to evoke cinema of old, despite being both black-and-white and silent (that is, without dialogue — a wonderfully compelling score fills the aural gap). Instead, it’s an exercise in visual storytelling and subtle physical acting, much like Marisa was in the last compilation. This time, two couples get together for dinner, and it qiuckly becomes apparent, thanks to great and restrained performances and spot-on editing, that there’s an undercurrent of flirtation and potential betrayal. But who, exactly, is flirting with whom?
Given that Tina Krause stars as one of the diners, you can bet that no matter how you diagram the flirtation among the foursome, she’s going to be involved. It’s unusual to see such a known face in a Jason Santo film — known, at least, among those who watch movies in the micro-budget arena; Krause is a prolific performer among movies that never cross the radar of the average movieviewer. Going for the known quantity, though, was a good bet; whatever her level of mainstream renown, she’s a professional performer, a necessity in a piece in which the story is carried not only by performances, but solely by non-verbal ones. Here, she proves herself not only a sexy actress (to be expected, given the majority of her other roles), but also a sexy actress.
Hmm.. Is it just me, or is there a theme here?
So what’s my complaint? Mainly that the whole dialogue-less storytelling gimmick was exactly what Santo was doing in Marisa. Both films even take romantic (dis)trust as their subject matter. And while I thought that Marisa, cheated, The Dinner takes that same cheat and makes it brazen. See, there’s this entire chunk of exposition necessary to the story, but it just can’t be relayed by image alone — so, for the second half, we’re treated to intercut flashback footage of Krause reading a letter, whose most salient points run across the screen for our reading pleasure. Where the text-on-screen band-aid in Marisa was, perhaps, an unwillingness to trust the audience to make a necessary leap, here it’s an admission that this isn’t a story that can be told solely with images, unless we consider the written word as an image.
The second film, Time Heals All Wounds, is about a man (Roman Berman) still struggling after two years with being abandoned by the love of his life. In moping to his galpal (Alecia Batson), he responds to the aphorism “Time heals all wounds” by wishing that he could freeze the world and take the time he needs to figure out why she left. Lo and behold, time stands still at his whim — and the two of them are literally stuck in a moment until he discovers why his romance fell apart.
“You were supposed to keep on ticking, dammit!”
Almost a two-person play, this is another piece that has to rely heavily on performance to pull it off. And the big problem? (Sigh.) It’s Roman Berman. Roman, baby, I love ya. You’ve done some wonderful behind-the-scenes work with Jason, and you’ve also got terrific comic presence on those rare occasions when Jason lets you cut loose and be funny. But you just don’t have the gravitas to pull off the exaggerated seriousness of a script that evokes the tone of a Twilight Zone episode.
The third and longest film, In a Sky With No Angels, is perhaps the most disappointing. Ten years out of high school, ex-cheerleader Sarah (Kathy Nestor) is contacted out of the blue by Paul (Jason Santo), a fellow alumnus whom she just can’t remember. It turns out, on meeting him, that he was a geeky admirer from afar who has since become a scientist — one whose research into recording the moment of death has reaped paradigm-shattering conclusions, and some very deadly enemies…
“Um… I think I shouldn’t have had that second burrito…”
Santo says in the behind-the-scenes footage that the central scene of a man and a woman in a hotel room discussing the secrets of the universe is one that’s been with him since his school days. I believe him. Not because the scene is inherently juvenile or immature, but because the story seems expressly constructed to support this one scene as is, without changes to accomodate story structure or plausibility. There’s a dictum taught in most creative-writing courses: “Kill your babies.” In other words, be ready to excise your favorite scenes if they hurt the work overall. Those babies we’ve nurtured since we were wee storytelling tykes are the hardest to kill, though. And this movie comes across as a desperate attempt to lend a framework to a single, inviolable scene concept, even if that framework ends up like a Rube Goldberg diagram to work around that scene.
There’s a certain sameness to all three story structures; each of them is, in effect, a steady buildup to a rugpull at the end that forces a reinterpretation of everything that came before. It’s a time-honored dramatic tradition, of course, and as mentioned, Time Heals All Wounds invites direct comparison to similar tropes commonly used on The Twilight Zone. But it gets tedious with overuse; rugpull stories are satisfying as minor snacks, but they quickly lose their flavor when they’re the only thing at the buffet. And Jason Santo’s got the cinematic skills to tell other stories — more varied, more complex in structure and dynamic, less like plays and more like feature films. To use all of these skills consistently in the service of so many rugpull stories is like breaking out the fine china and the real silverware for a McDonald’s cheeseburger.
They’re paying attention to the last paragraph. Are you?
Boy, does that sound negative. Please remember, though, it’s negative only in comparison to both what Santo has done before, and what he shows himself capable of doing further. Bent, Volume 2 is still head and shoulders above almost all micro-budget cinema, and a newcomer picking up the DVD without previous contact with Santo’s work will scarcely be disappointed. But Santo’s been effectively writing IOU’s for the big feature-length project of which he’s capable for far too long now; it’s time to come clean and cash the note.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 0
- breasts: 0 (close, but nope)
- explosions: 0
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
