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Obsessed with a “famous” actor (appearing on a low-grade “Inside the Actor’s Studio” upon first appearance, interviewed by a less-dorky Todd Solondz), she buys a video camera and films various love messages never to be sent. Before long, her father passes away and she takes her mother’s parents’ offer to visit in New York for a while, bringing her closer to her object of desire, eventually coming up with a scheme to sneakily meet her dream man. Myra Paci’s film is less about big events and more about personal events and character study. That venture, too, proves not to be wholly eventful, yet there is still something provocative and alluring within the film itself. When it isn’t alternating between the nettlesome grainy and haphazard video image, the cinematography is swift and very flattering of its star Susan May Pratt (10 Things I Hate about You), eternally biting and chewing and sucking on her full, pouty lips. (No pair of lips in recent screen memory recall such avid attention.) Pratt, too, is also able to carry the weight of the film (light or not), mixing a lot of conflicting emotions and convincing wanderlust without much basis to go on. Her character is never fully established — coming into the picture too late in whos and whys, and ducking out too early before a satisfying resolve could be reached — but Paci is able to relate the disillusionment, the distant obsession, the familial conflict, and a larger issue of infidelity, as viewed through the awkward eyes of a newfound adult.

[Worth-seeing.]

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=8450&reviewer=172
originally posted: 12/29/03 09:56:45
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