Prox Partum Depression

Quick Plot: As Esther leaves her final OBGYN appointment, a hooded stranger attacks her from behind, stealing some cash and inflicting terrible harm on her pregnant belly. Having lost her baby, Esther is visited by a hospital social worker who encourages her to try out some support groups.

It seems as though that's exactly what she needs. The reserved, distant Esther lives alone with a tank of fish who don't survive her hospital stay. At a group meeting, Esther is befriended by the much more put-together Melanie, a friendly woman recovering from the loss of her husband and son at the hands of a drunk driver.

Proxy is a film best watched knowing nothing more than the above synopsis, so those who haven't seen the film should probably stop here. It's not quite perfect, but it's an intriguing dark ride that makes an appropriately chilling followup to director Zack Parker's outstanding debut Scalene. You can find it streaming on Hulu.

Now let's talk.

There is much to be said for films that don't reveal what they're about until well into their running time. Proxy begins as Esther's story, as we struggle to understand this distant, lonely victim of a truly horrible crime trying to rebuild her life.

Or so we think.

Aside from the fact that Esther is far more complicated than we ever imagined, Proxy also does some fancy footwork in changing gears halfway through to become Melanie's story. Melanie, an equally if not more damaged woman, is a Muchausen by Proxy poster girl with dangerous ambitions about playing the hero. 

Much like Scalene, Proxy doesn't comfort its audience with any sense of morality. Our only real sympathetic character (the always welcome Joe Swanberg as Melanie's clueless husband) is so specifically kept in the margins that while our hearts go out to his plight, he never really seems to stand a chance. In an odd inverse, Kristina Kelebe's hell-in-a-pickup-truck spurned ex-con is introduced as an untamed animal with a violent streak, only to become something of an antihero purely because her crimes seem somehow purer than the wolf-in-sheep's-blouse-wearing Melanie.

Zack Parker, along with his writing partner Kevin Donner, is an exciting filmmaker with a wonderfully twisted ability to tell incredibly challenging stories. Next to Scalene, Proxy also reminded me a bit of Simon Rumley's Red White and Blue, a similarly harrowing genre-bender that successfully suffocates its audience in the amount of human-caused tragedy that attacks its characters.

Proxy isn't a fun film (though it packs its own brand of occasional dark humor), nor is it scary in any traditional sense. But it will, I imagine, lodge itself deep under many a viewer's skin. If it doesn't, you probably shouldn't volunteer to babysit anytime soon.

High Points

I've said it before and I'll say it again: a well-executed ambiguous ending can be a truly beautiful thing

Low Points

It says a lot about a horror film when a 2-hour running length isn't long enough, but I really did wish we had just a little more time learning about Esther and what brought her to the kind of place where, well, she'd ask her girlfriend to anonymously crush her almost-ready-to-deliver baby

Lessons Learned

Tattoo artists who want to know what's going on read the newspapers

Local newsmen are loyal to their sources

Think very carefully before asking someone who has just gone through tremendous loss, "So how are you doing?"

Rent/Bury/Buy

Proxy won't make anyone feel better about the world, but it will hopefully give many a film fan hope for the future of honest, cruel, and incredibly rich cinema. I'll continue to buy what Zack Parker is selling...even if I want to curl up in a ball with my far better intentioned cats after.

Math Class Redux!

A scalene triangle is one in which all three sides (and therefore, angles) are not the same. Since Scalene is not a movie about triangles, you should keep this in mind.

Quick Plot: We open on some sudden violence as a middle aged woman named Janice Trimble barrels her way into an upper middle class suburban home in a clumsy attempt to gun down a pretty young woman named Paige. Awkward girl fight commence!

We quickly cut to a chronologically earlier scene as Janice purchases her gun, and next, to one where we see why: her mentally impaired son Jakob has been sent to a mental hospital after allegedly attacking Paige, his home aide. Along with these scenes comes some heartbreaking moments as Janice tries to raise the silent Jakob while attempting to start a sweet romance with a bearded nice guy. As the scenes flash backward Memento style, we see that the sad roots of this family's plight. It's heartbreaking.

Or is it heartbreaking for other reasons? After we flow through Janice's past, we're switched to the more surreal point of view of Jakob, who sees the world from shaky, even LESS linear eyes. We only linger there a little while before switching to the (maybe) more straightforward perception of Paige, a sociology major with good intentions who begins to suspect something amiss at the Trimble house. Is she right, and have we been tricked by Janice's point of view? Or is Paige damaged in her own twisted style in a way that, due to her position, nobody (including the audience) will ever have any reason not to trust her instincts and actions? 

Scalene is a difficult film, something I say as a compliment. Much like the even darker Red White & Blue, Scalene is film that challenges its audience and refuses to let them know if they've won. Grounding it all are three fantastic performances in roles that require an awful lot from their actors. Margo Martindale is one of those faces that you've seen in bit parts forever before she finally gained some mainstream fame with an Emmy award for Justified. She's the kind of 'real woman' actress who you always want more of, someone who can steal a scene from Dexter's Michael C. Hall while laying in a hospital bed bemoaning the lack in quality of key lime pie. As Janice, Martindale gets an incredible chance not just as the long-deserved lead, but as a character who acts from three distinctive point of views. It's juicy, and she squeezes it for all its worth.

Equally good is Hannah Hall (young Jenny in Forrest Gump!) in the tricky part of Paige. While it's easy to side against her, Hall plays Paige with an intriguing balance of entitlement and good intentions. As Jakob, Stake Land’s Adam Scarimbolo has to play a brain-damaged young man with little glamour. It works.

Directed by Zach Parker (who co-wrote the script with Brandon Owens), Scalene is bound to be a divisive film. The backwards approach might seem to some to be derivative of Memento, though I found it an effective way to immediately catch you off guard, forcing you to see the sad effects of some choices and putting your pity in a certain place, only to later twist that around with another point of view. Ultimately, the fact that the narratives don’t *quite* add up makes Scalene something deliberately uneasy, a film less about who’s right than who’s who.

High Notes

It’s called ACTING!

Low Notes

The opening scene features an appropriately awkward, even humorous fight scene. While it's an entertaining and ultimately fitting way to start the film, the choice in score--which goes from Hitchcockian suspense to near-circus cues in less than 3 minutes--almost calls too much attention to itself. I think I understand what Parker is trying to do in terms of toying with tone, but upon first viewing, I just found it distracting

Lessons Learned

When it comes to college, blonds only hang out with blonds

Always check the flipbook before ordering pizza

In some states, it’s REAL easy to buy a gun

Rent/Bury/Buy

I hesitate to heartily recommend Scalene, as it's sure to polarize a large chunk of any viewing audience. While virtually everyone will appreciate its key performances, the very nature of its ambiguity is bound to make some viewers flat-out angry. I for one thought Zach Parker's approach was both unique and incredibly powerful, especially when aided by the powerhouse that is Margo Martindale. The pieces don't add up, and while that might indeed be frustrating, it also makes its own point. Scalene is currently streaming on Netflix and makes me an uncomfortable, but fascinating view. Word on the Internet Superhighway says that the DVD includes a few special features, and considering this is a movie that will easily benefit from a rewatch, I just might put it on my shopping list.