Chris Knipp
05-07-2013, 08:25 PM
Originally reviewed as part of ND/NF 2012. Now in theatrical release, highly recommended if you can find it. Great that this charming film has a small theatrical release. Watch for it on DVD.
Terrence Nance: AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY (2012)
http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/1492/oversimple1articlelarge.jpg
NAMIK MINTER IN AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY
Seduction through analysis of seduction
Terence Nance is a charming young African American man with big hair and a big heart. He wanted to give the latter to a young lady called Namik Minter, and this feature film, said to have been 3 hours long at one point, then honed down to 94 minutes through help from Sundance, was designed to woo Namik by delineating the nature of his romantic affection for her (he tends to fall into flowery formal language when talking about his feelings and his romances). The many, sometimes too many, voiceovers, often in the second person, describe and analyze. The topic may seem repetitive, but Nance makes it interesting by the appeal of his looks and personality and by the constantly varying visual styles, by interrupting and subdividing his visual texts, and by including by way of further description and analysis many animated film passages, these executed differently too by a variety of hands, following his storyboarding. If Terence Nance didn't succeed in wooing Namik, he may very well seduce you with this highly original first feature, which is bursting with ideas, human warmth and creative energy.
Terence grew up in (by his own account in the film) an exceptionally warm and healthy family -- which (though he does not mention this) was in the strong black community of Dallas. He thereafter received his undergraduate degree from Northeastern University in Boston, Mass., made his first film while studying at Cape Town University in South Africa and received his MFA from New York University in 2007. He also lived in Paris for two years, 2007 to 2009, and now lives in Brooklyn. Some of the action, including the meetings with Namik, appear to take place in NYC. He shows himself working as a street musician with a guitar and describes himself as having a hard time waking up to get to work on time.
But the central event is an evening when he had been expecting Namik to come to his place after work, when he learns she isn't coming. In an interview (http://rinnyriot.blogspot.com/2011/12/interview-terence-nance.html) online with an LA blogger called Rinny Riot he says, "I had what I thought was a complicated situation with a woman, that inspired me to write the film. So my original intentions probably amounted to some sort of need to consecrate or validate a dying romance." The original smaller film-within-the-film was called "What Would You Feel?" It visually, in multiple alternate versions, restages the expeience of rushing home from work and learning that his would-be beloved (who turns out to be Namik) is not coming that evening and each time ends with the rhythmically repeated question, "What would you feel?"
He got Namik to play herself. And somehow this takes her by surprise, or the experience of seeing the reenactments on screen before an audience of a hundred people, including many of her friends, is a bit of a shock to her. He interviews her about this experience during the course of the larger film. All of this and the complex animated films-within-the-film can be seen as wooing Namik, but in the end he sums it up by saying "in simple English, 'I got friend-zoned.'" He has already discussed at length how little a young man wants a young woman in whom he is interested to consider him a "friend."
The Variety review (http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117947016/) suggests Terence adds "vaguely New-Wave style" to his arsenal of seductive techniques, and this is true even if unintentional (the two years in Paris may contribute). At any rate the force of this young filmmaker's potential surely comes from the "omni-directional creative energy" he describes having when in film school he was spray stenciling "FLY" all over the city, making T shirts, and making music, and the fact that he doesn't pigeonhole himself as a director.
In the film he moves on from the incident, which he thought he could depict in five minutes but ran to three hours and took up years of his time, to (justifying the time spent) a film that analyzes an archetypal "romantic-ish" relationship, and also to goddess-worship, to the valuing and use of "emotional memory," in other words, to romanticism itself.
In MissRiot's blog interview Terence Nance is articulate and righteously concerned about strengthening the creative role of African Americans in film. "Learn your craft to competency but learn your voice to mastery," he says, addressing aspiring filmmakers of color. He seems to be doing that, and for all we know he might be the next Spike Lee. This also reminded me of another strong memorable young black film about romance, Barry Jenkins' 2008 Medicine for Melancholy. (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1040)
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty debuted at Sundance, then was shown at Rotterdam. Screened for this review in New Directors 2012, in theatrical release since 12 and 26 April 2013. Currently showing, NYC:
Cinema Village
22 East 12th Street, New York, NY
3:10 7:05pm
Film Society Lincoln Center - Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th Street, New York, NY
2:00 6:45pm
http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/5205/37733919718823703234410.jpg
TERENCE NANCE PROMOTIONAL PHOTO
This is a new director and a new film.
Teaser for the film: here. (http://vimeo.com/13103023)
Current trailer for it: here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BuXRTi-pJyA)
_________________
©Chris Knipp 2012
Terrence Nance: AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY (2012)
http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/1492/oversimple1articlelarge.jpg
NAMIK MINTER IN AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY
Seduction through analysis of seduction
Terence Nance is a charming young African American man with big hair and a big heart. He wanted to give the latter to a young lady called Namik Minter, and this feature film, said to have been 3 hours long at one point, then honed down to 94 minutes through help from Sundance, was designed to woo Namik by delineating the nature of his romantic affection for her (he tends to fall into flowery formal language when talking about his feelings and his romances). The many, sometimes too many, voiceovers, often in the second person, describe and analyze. The topic may seem repetitive, but Nance makes it interesting by the appeal of his looks and personality and by the constantly varying visual styles, by interrupting and subdividing his visual texts, and by including by way of further description and analysis many animated film passages, these executed differently too by a variety of hands, following his storyboarding. If Terence Nance didn't succeed in wooing Namik, he may very well seduce you with this highly original first feature, which is bursting with ideas, human warmth and creative energy.
Terence grew up in (by his own account in the film) an exceptionally warm and healthy family -- which (though he does not mention this) was in the strong black community of Dallas. He thereafter received his undergraduate degree from Northeastern University in Boston, Mass., made his first film while studying at Cape Town University in South Africa and received his MFA from New York University in 2007. He also lived in Paris for two years, 2007 to 2009, and now lives in Brooklyn. Some of the action, including the meetings with Namik, appear to take place in NYC. He shows himself working as a street musician with a guitar and describes himself as having a hard time waking up to get to work on time.
But the central event is an evening when he had been expecting Namik to come to his place after work, when he learns she isn't coming. In an interview (http://rinnyriot.blogspot.com/2011/12/interview-terence-nance.html) online with an LA blogger called Rinny Riot he says, "I had what I thought was a complicated situation with a woman, that inspired me to write the film. So my original intentions probably amounted to some sort of need to consecrate or validate a dying romance." The original smaller film-within-the-film was called "What Would You Feel?" It visually, in multiple alternate versions, restages the expeience of rushing home from work and learning that his would-be beloved (who turns out to be Namik) is not coming that evening and each time ends with the rhythmically repeated question, "What would you feel?"
He got Namik to play herself. And somehow this takes her by surprise, or the experience of seeing the reenactments on screen before an audience of a hundred people, including many of her friends, is a bit of a shock to her. He interviews her about this experience during the course of the larger film. All of this and the complex animated films-within-the-film can be seen as wooing Namik, but in the end he sums it up by saying "in simple English, 'I got friend-zoned.'" He has already discussed at length how little a young man wants a young woman in whom he is interested to consider him a "friend."
The Variety review (http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117947016/) suggests Terence adds "vaguely New-Wave style" to his arsenal of seductive techniques, and this is true even if unintentional (the two years in Paris may contribute). At any rate the force of this young filmmaker's potential surely comes from the "omni-directional creative energy" he describes having when in film school he was spray stenciling "FLY" all over the city, making T shirts, and making music, and the fact that he doesn't pigeonhole himself as a director.
In the film he moves on from the incident, which he thought he could depict in five minutes but ran to three hours and took up years of his time, to (justifying the time spent) a film that analyzes an archetypal "romantic-ish" relationship, and also to goddess-worship, to the valuing and use of "emotional memory," in other words, to romanticism itself.
In MissRiot's blog interview Terence Nance is articulate and righteously concerned about strengthening the creative role of African Americans in film. "Learn your craft to competency but learn your voice to mastery," he says, addressing aspiring filmmakers of color. He seems to be doing that, and for all we know he might be the next Spike Lee. This also reminded me of another strong memorable young black film about romance, Barry Jenkins' 2008 Medicine for Melancholy. (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1040)
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty debuted at Sundance, then was shown at Rotterdam. Screened for this review in New Directors 2012, in theatrical release since 12 and 26 April 2013. Currently showing, NYC:
Cinema Village
22 East 12th Street, New York, NY
3:10 7:05pm
Film Society Lincoln Center - Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th Street, New York, NY
2:00 6:45pm
http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/5205/37733919718823703234410.jpg
TERENCE NANCE PROMOTIONAL PHOTO
This is a new director and a new film.
Teaser for the film: here. (http://vimeo.com/13103023)
Current trailer for it: here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BuXRTi-pJyA)
_________________
©Chris Knipp 2012