20140309: Drama Review--The Wait

The Wait

1. Fundamentals, reception.


1. American live action feature length film, 2013, NR, 98 minutes, drama, thriller.
2. IMDB: 4.4/10.0 from 129 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 18% on the meter; 17% liked it from 242 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.1/5.0 from 2,016 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: M. Blash.
6. Starring: Jena Malone as Angela, Chloe Sevigny as Emma, Luke Grimes as Ben, Devon Gearhart as Ian, Michael O'Keefe as Ben's dad, Lana Green as Karen, Henry Gummer as Henry.


2. Setup and Plot


1. The picture opens just after the death of the mother of sisters Angela and Emma.  Someone calls Emma and tells her the mother will return.  Emma tells this to Angela who laughs in spite of her overall sadness.


2. The sisters are a bit slow getting officials in to look at the body. Karen (Emma's daughter) is a bit weirded out by everything.  Then again, so is Angela.  Her off and on budding romance with Ben is interrupted now and then with her dealing with the death.


3. Angela's semi-meltdown when Henry (Emma's ex) wants to see his mother in law was rather awkward.  No one had bothered to tell Henry about the death.


4. Spoiler alert: there is no resolution to anything.  The best is not ahead in the film; instead the best moment was the golden second before the film started.


3. Conclusions


1. One line summary: An island chain of awkward moments caught on film.
2. Two stars of five.


4. Scores


1. Cinematography: 9/10 Some great camera work to be sure, from the technical standpoint.


2. Sound: 5/10 Irritating and discordant, more or less like all the inner versus outer performance art pieces that comprise the film.


3. Acting: 2/10 Roughly speaking, every other performance I've seen from Chloe Sevigny was better than this one.  All the other performances (except, perhaps, that of Luke Grimes) seemed to be of the form 'hit your mark, say your lines, do not think.'  Actors should do a bit better than this.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 The interleaving of the narrative with footage of firemen doing their best to contain a huge forest fire was interesting to a point.  The characters in the film are not touched by it--unless they go looking for it, and most do not--but all this real destruction is nearby.  These entitled, upper class twits don't seem to see themselves losing ground (burning up inside) while their outer lives seem fine.  That's great from a 20 year old film student, but I could do without it in a motion picture that has been released.  The manipulative camera techniques were not all that helpful or interesting or novel; I don't feel that they advanced the narrative or the overall impact of the story.  Overall, the picture seemed like visiting an archipelago from a cruise ship.  Each island is less interesting than the last, and there is no particular coherence to the experience as a whole.