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Friday, August 19, 2011
MOVIE REVIEW
Bellflower
Fueling The Raging Flames Of Love's Apocalypse
Evan Glodell as Woodrow in "Bellflower". Mr. Glodell wrote, edited,
produced and directed the film.
Oscilloscope Laboratories
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Friday,
August 19, 2011
Shakespearean, vividly alive with rage and power, Evan Glodell's "Bellflower" is
an ultra-bright, lucid fantasy drama about the end of the world. The film
is a cautionary tale about love and the burning hole betrayal leaves behind.
"Love will hurt," warns a man's wailing voice early on. Lord Humongous
will strike, and strike hard. A quote underlines this. "Bellflower",
also a city east of Los Angeles, refers to the avenue where much of this film
plays out in Southern California. This jolting film is making its way
around the country.
Woodrow (Mr. Glodell) is awkward, a guy you'd expect to see in a romantic
comedy. Yet he's supremely confident and tough, as are all the characters,
and well-acted. "Bellflower" calculatingly withholds Woodrow's strengths.
Woodrow's gregarious best friend Aiden (Tyler Dawson) stirs dreams of a real
apocalypse. The duo wants their imaginary Mother Medusa gang, powered by
their jet black muscle car, to ride through flames in a blaze of glory.
Woodrow and Aiden are flame-throwers. They blast objects with enormous
flames that illuminate the dark night sky. These two are inviolable,
almost inseparable, until a femme fatale type named Milly (Jessie Wiseman) comes
along. Milly has Courtney (Rebekah Brandes), a friend as close to her as
Aiden is to Woodrow. The women aren't as preoccupied with setting the
world on fire.
"Bellflower" is jarring poetry. Part-hallucinogen, part-reality, Mr.
Glodell's film keeps you guessing as to what's real and what isn't. The
film evokes such escapist trips as "Two Lane Blacktop" and the apocalyptic
thriller "Mad Max", which it references. There's flourishes of Lynch and a
nihilism that burns in places we've all been to or felt. This film is
about what boys do and what boys feel, and the two are kept separate until they
merge and explode, in ways that thunder and roar as loudly and shrilly as Trent
Reznor's song "Burn" does.
We see men hurt, physically and emotionally. If hell hath no fury like a
woman's scorn, then heaven help us when a man gets madder than Max.
There's an intricacy of machinery and construction that "Bellflower"
builds so well: the mechanics of cars and their components, and the rhythms and
mechanics of sex, touch and foreplay, shown in several scenes, sometimes as an
explosive juxtaposition. We observe what love does to sisterhoods, how it
solidifies and disrupts them.
Mr. Glodell captures natural male bonding between his character and Mr. Dawson,
who as Aiden is an appealing sidekick, someone who'd probably help you in
distress or pour cold water on you to wake you up. Their rapport is
effortless. Mr. Glodell's cinematographer's fish-eye, smoked glass lenses
capture the incubators of feeling, memory and anger in six-titled vignettes that
crackle and are often suspenseful. "Bellflower", which has a bold voice
and a strong sense of its atmosphere, penetrates, unsettles and portrays the
look of love's anguish. It's a fine approximation of security and
commitment gone haywire, messy and violently desperate.
With: Vincent Grashaw, Zack Kraus,
Keghan Hurst, Jon Huck.
"Bellflower" is rated R by the Motion Picture
Association Of America for disturbing violence, some strong sexuality, nudity,
pervasive language, and drug use. The film's running time is one hour and
45 minutes.
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