Film-fest oriented pic from Medellin, Colombia sees debuting writer/director Catalina Arroyave Restrepo offering student-level execution to a workable, if somewhat hackneyed dramatic situation: Twenty-something graffiti artist couple trying to move past the crime elements & drug scene of their student days even as past friends continue in ‘the trade.’ About halfway thru, the character drama finds a plot of sorts when one of their recently primed ‘wall canvases,’ located near a Youth Center they frequent, is vandalized with a threatening slogan aimed at them: ‘Snitches Get Stitches.’ Debating whether or not to go on with what is suddenly a dangerous art statement, the possibility of a beating, a murder and a magnificent painting of a whale tests their will. You can see how this is meant to work, and there’s a refreshing new angle in seeing it play out in a middle-class milieu (not a favela in sight), but Restrepo gets little but standard responses out of her young cast, and her jerky handheld style grows progressively alienating. Disappointing.
No comments:
Post a Comment