Era$e/Rew]nd ~ Film Reviews ~ "All Over Me"
(Peccadillo Pictures- 1997 95 mins)
Irfan Shah takes a 'riotous' look at new coming of
age flick, 'All Over Me'. Soundtrack includes: Ani De
Franco; Babes in Toyland; Cornershop; Patti Smith; The
Jesus and Mary Chain; The Amps; Drugstore; Sleater Kinney.
Release 08.12.09
An intimate and understated new coming of age film
comes complete with the riot grrrl soundtrack of the
year ..
Claude (played by Alison Folland), a quietly spoken
riot grrrl, is in love with Ellen (Tara Subkoff) who
is in love with the brutish Mark (Cole Hauser). Luke
(Pat Briggs), a musician, befriends Claude but his homosexuality
has marked him as a target.
There is an American light that suffuses the streets
and shabby apartments with beautiful but faded colour.
It seduces watchers into believing that they could be
happy living anywhere in America just as long as the
city sun fell each day on the graffiti-skin walls and
formica diner-tables as it does in the movies.
I am one of the seduced so it was a pleasure to look
at the low budget snapshot of life that is Alex and
Sylvia Sichel’s latest release ‘All Over Me’. It‘s the
world as Nan Goldin might have interpreted it – dreamy,
damaged but hopeful. Only, this world is populated by
children – confused but ultimately capable teenagers
all dealing with varying levels of psychic bruising
and finding solace in grunge music and clumsy friendships.
The storyline of the Sichel sisters’ movie is authentically
slight – after all, it doesn’t really take that much
to scare, enthuse and propel us all in life. It also
has a low budget feel which works in its favour. Its
visual aesthetics achieve the grubby chic of an i-d
magazine fashion shoot: bars glow orange, mornings are
pale gold and bedrooms are believably clothes-strewn.
The performances are all winning in completely different
ways – Folland is likeable and naturalistic, amateurish
without being clumsy or jarring; Subkoff is a miniature,
coked-up Gwyneth Paltrow and Hauser is impressively
hateful.
The film as a whole could be seen as a minor work –
no powerhouse scenes, no really quotable lines, no unexpected
twists and an amateurish quality to the production,
however...
Watching this film made me realise an inherent quality
to shooting on a low budget: fidelity to the moment
of performance.
With money comes cameras – a scene can be shot from
many different angles and a range of cuts are possible.
This not only allows the director to control where we
look, but it allows gaps in conversation to be cut at
will thereby giving the director control over the speed
and rhythm of an exchange. Depending on fewer cameras
takes away the freedom to cut which in turn protects
the dynamic of the original conversation – it is the
characters who now retain control over the exchange.
This is what happens in ‘All Over Me’ with its little
gaps and pauses, its ‘ums’ and its ‘ahs’, and it suits
the feel of the movie, and suits the performances given
by the irresistibly gauche main characters. Anyone relating
to the charming Claude, her confusion and her messy
obsessions, could find solace in this film and with
its characters.
