Wetlands
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Trailer Watch: David Wnendt’s Wetlands
Perhaps I’m being contrarian, jaded and/or anti-clickbait, but David Wnendt’s Wetlands isn’t as wildly gross out as it’s cracked up to be. I have a harder time digesting, say, Pink Flamingos. There’s substance behind the film’s good humored gags, coalescing as they do around the liberated but fundamentally unhappy protagonist, Helen. Which brings me to another bargaining chip amongst all its provocations: one of the most enjoyable performances of late, courtesy of the emotionally acrobatic Carla Juri. Brandon Harris and I at least agreed on that in our respective takes from Treefort and SXSW. In any event, Strand Releasing has the film slated for a September 5 release […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 15, 2014 -
If You Build It, Will They Come? On the Treefort Film Fest
Idaho’s only city of 100,000+ residents sits in a valley north of the Snake river. Boise is a boomtown these days, with over 150,000 new residents since George W. Bush took office and new west corporate bravado written all over it. The flat city’s pert, immensely walkable and surprisingly bumpin’ downtown extends into residential areas north and east. Looming hills ringing much of the town can be glimpsed from almost anywhere in the city proper as long as the light is just so; it’s an oddly marvelous place to roam around. A gold rush town after the French and Native […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 28, 2014 -
SXSW Dispatch: She’s Lost Control, Wetlands, Frank
“I thought I was really onto something,” smiled director Anja Marquardt during the Q&A for She’s Lost Control. “I’d never even heard of The Sessions.” Peculiar profession aside, Marquardt can rest easy: the two films have little to nothing in common. Much more than a narrative quirk, Marquardt uses the untraditional avenue of sex surrogacy to explore the contradiction at the crux of her character study. Our subject here is not John Hawkes in an iron lung, but Ronah, a woman, a graduate student and a sex surrogate on the verge, played with disquieting charisma by high-waisted pant aficionado Brooke Bloom. More alone than […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 12, 2014
