I recently caught the latest film 'ANHEDONIA' by this production company, on Amazon prime, and was so wowed by the microbudget arthouse epic that I immediately bought the previous titles that I could, to see if this was some sort of anomaly. Much to my surprise they've been making great quality films for a while now.
This film caught me off guard. I knew it was super low budget and about a topic that doesn't immediately seem P.C, but I would honestly call it the best mumblecore film I've seen. Don't get me wrong the Duplass Brothers, Swanberg and Andrew Bujaski made some great content, but they lacked good narrative structure or larger themes. This seems waaaaay ahead of it's time.
The acting is near-perfect (it's almost impossible to grasp which moments were scripted/real/improvised throughout, and I loved that). With that said, it's also incredibly tightly structured, with clear arcs for all the main characters.
The simple lighting and camera does the opposite of what the title suggests. This isn't a narcissistic film in the slightest. It doesn't show off. It just shows someone behaving narcissistic in all its raw nastiness. Sometimes it's ugly, other times it's dramatically awe-inducing.
The minor flaws lie in (as is to be expected) the technical side of things - camera composition is fairly basic, and sound is simply competent/clear. The music is very well made, but not too subtly used throughout.
What is most impressive is what is essential - content, or more specifically, characters, story, acting, direction - all of which showed a great sense of confidence and everyone involved clearly had a great future ahead of them. To see that in six short years they have progressed to underground indie greats is truly wonderful to see. I'm inspired to make my own movies now. Thank you!
