Chris Knipp
12-18-2013, 08:55 PM
Matthew Porterfield: I USED TO BE DARKER (2013)
http://imageshack.us/a/img20/6981/q2ww.png
DERAGH CAMPBELL IN I USED TO BE DARKER
Circling around a situation, with music
Matt Porterfield is a subtle filmmaker of the American indie kind, as different from his fellow Baltimoreans John Waters and Barry Levinson as they are from each other. But all three have deeply rooted their work in this particular East Coast city, and it makes sense therefore that MoMA is running a December 12-24, 2013 series of the three directors' films, called "Our Town: Baltimore" (https://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1443). I saw Porterfield's second feature Putty Hill during a Feb.-Mar. 2011 run at Cinema Village (http://www.cinemavillage.com/chc/cv/show_movie.asp?movieid=2056), where the director and collaborators were on hand for a lengthy Q&A. Putty Hill focuses on a wake filmed and staged in vérité fashion, with one speaker after another unpredictably and improvisationally adding a facet to our picture of the deceased. As one who grew up in Baltimore myself I was struck by Putty Hill's sense of place, but I didn't write a review.
I Used to Be Darker is more conventional, perhaps more polished as well as more personal in content, but not necessarily more successful in final outcome. It concerns a divorce, viewed through two young women, the couple's daughter and their Northern Irish niece who unexpectedly turns up and hangs out with her friend, taking half the picture to begin admitting what her situation is and why she's just abruptly left the nearby resort Ocean City, Maryland.
Taryn is played by Deragh Campbell, a young American born actress with an Irish mother whose accent she fakes. Her aunt Kim (Kim Taylor) and uncle Bill (Ned Oldham) are both musicians, rather than actors, in real life, and music plays a strong part here. Returning from her first year at college their daughter Abby (Hannah Gross, a longtime friend of Campbell in real life) and Taryn pal around, but Abby, aspiring to become an actress in New York, is frustrated and angry, as are her parents. Kim is moving out, taking all her possessions (including audio equipment) but leaving Bill, now drinking too much, the house and swimming pool. The couple has lost its deepest bond when Bill took a corporate job to support the household and had to downplay music.
The film was released in New York in October and thoroughly reviewed. There is sense to Jeannette Catsoulis's New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/movies/i-used-to-be-darker-is-a-journey-into-a-family-breakdown.html?_r=0)review that speaks of "Porterfield's abstract, enervated style"; she introduces the film as "A ballad of photographs, music and memories" and comments that the music helps energize things. Noel Murray's review for The Dissolve (http://thedissolve.com/reviews/255-i-used-to-be-darker/)observes, wisely I think, that in I Used to Be Darker there's a "discordance between the film’s overheated dysfunctional-family clichés and Porterfield’s relaxed, watchful approach." Indeed the indirection of the style is at odds with the angry encounters, which also the non-actors or newcomers are ill qualified at times to deliver convincingly. The story elliptically unfolding through Amy Belk’s screenplay is delivered sometimes confrontationally, more often crab-wise or at one remove. The scenes might be described as a series of snapshots. Some of them are lively and crowded, beginning with a party at a house in Ocean City and including several busy scenes at clubs with live music, a pickup football game on a Maryland field. And sometimes there is quiet and solitude, as when Taryn is alone on the third floor of Kim and Bill's house poking around among her girlfriend's old diaries. In all of these one may justifiably speak as Ronnie Scheib of Variety (http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/i-used-to-be-darker-1117948997/)does of "lenser Jeremy Saulnier’s quietly striking compositions." Music and image may more than make up, in the eyes of Porterfield's already well established body of admirers, for the director's not having yet quite struck the ideal balance, for him, between improvised and scripted.
Surprisingly enough Adèle Exarchopoulos, cowinner of the acting prize at Cannes this year for Blue Is the Warmest Color/La vie d'Adèle, plays a minor role in this film. Another random tidbit: on the website "This Long Century" (http://www.thislongcentury.com/?p=6172)Porterfield has posted a series of color slides made with a 35mm Nikon between 1959 and 1972 by his grandfather, who casually seems about to give William Eggleston a run for his money. Porterfield believes he has inherited his grandfather's "aesthetic" and way of framing images. Porterfield has been a teacher in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Johns Hopkins University, but now resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
I Used to Be Darker, 90 mins., debuted at Sundance, Jan. 2013. Its theatrical premiere was 27 Sept. at the Charles Theater, Baltimore, followed by IFC Center in NYC 4 Oct. and a roll-out through Nov. at other venues across the country. The film will enter Paris cinemas 25 December 2013. Strand Releasing brings it out on DVD 28 January 2014.
The upcoming "Our Town: Baltimore" screenings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York: Saturday, Dec. 21, 2013, 5:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1; and Monday, Dec. 23, 2013, 4:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1. Also showing: Porterfield's Hamilton and Putty Hill; Barry Levinson's Diner, Tin Men, Avalon, and Liberty Heights and John Waters' Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Polyester, and Hairspray. There'll be O's fans going down the ocean, hon.
http://imageshack.us/a/img20/6981/q2ww.png
DERAGH CAMPBELL IN I USED TO BE DARKER
Circling around a situation, with music
Matt Porterfield is a subtle filmmaker of the American indie kind, as different from his fellow Baltimoreans John Waters and Barry Levinson as they are from each other. But all three have deeply rooted their work in this particular East Coast city, and it makes sense therefore that MoMA is running a December 12-24, 2013 series of the three directors' films, called "Our Town: Baltimore" (https://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1443). I saw Porterfield's second feature Putty Hill during a Feb.-Mar. 2011 run at Cinema Village (http://www.cinemavillage.com/chc/cv/show_movie.asp?movieid=2056), where the director and collaborators were on hand for a lengthy Q&A. Putty Hill focuses on a wake filmed and staged in vérité fashion, with one speaker after another unpredictably and improvisationally adding a facet to our picture of the deceased. As one who grew up in Baltimore myself I was struck by Putty Hill's sense of place, but I didn't write a review.
I Used to Be Darker is more conventional, perhaps more polished as well as more personal in content, but not necessarily more successful in final outcome. It concerns a divorce, viewed through two young women, the couple's daughter and their Northern Irish niece who unexpectedly turns up and hangs out with her friend, taking half the picture to begin admitting what her situation is and why she's just abruptly left the nearby resort Ocean City, Maryland.
Taryn is played by Deragh Campbell, a young American born actress with an Irish mother whose accent she fakes. Her aunt Kim (Kim Taylor) and uncle Bill (Ned Oldham) are both musicians, rather than actors, in real life, and music plays a strong part here. Returning from her first year at college their daughter Abby (Hannah Gross, a longtime friend of Campbell in real life) and Taryn pal around, but Abby, aspiring to become an actress in New York, is frustrated and angry, as are her parents. Kim is moving out, taking all her possessions (including audio equipment) but leaving Bill, now drinking too much, the house and swimming pool. The couple has lost its deepest bond when Bill took a corporate job to support the household and had to downplay music.
The film was released in New York in October and thoroughly reviewed. There is sense to Jeannette Catsoulis's New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/movies/i-used-to-be-darker-is-a-journey-into-a-family-breakdown.html?_r=0)review that speaks of "Porterfield's abstract, enervated style"; she introduces the film as "A ballad of photographs, music and memories" and comments that the music helps energize things. Noel Murray's review for The Dissolve (http://thedissolve.com/reviews/255-i-used-to-be-darker/)observes, wisely I think, that in I Used to Be Darker there's a "discordance between the film’s overheated dysfunctional-family clichés and Porterfield’s relaxed, watchful approach." Indeed the indirection of the style is at odds with the angry encounters, which also the non-actors or newcomers are ill qualified at times to deliver convincingly. The story elliptically unfolding through Amy Belk’s screenplay is delivered sometimes confrontationally, more often crab-wise or at one remove. The scenes might be described as a series of snapshots. Some of them are lively and crowded, beginning with a party at a house in Ocean City and including several busy scenes at clubs with live music, a pickup football game on a Maryland field. And sometimes there is quiet and solitude, as when Taryn is alone on the third floor of Kim and Bill's house poking around among her girlfriend's old diaries. In all of these one may justifiably speak as Ronnie Scheib of Variety (http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/i-used-to-be-darker-1117948997/)does of "lenser Jeremy Saulnier’s quietly striking compositions." Music and image may more than make up, in the eyes of Porterfield's already well established body of admirers, for the director's not having yet quite struck the ideal balance, for him, between improvised and scripted.
Surprisingly enough Adèle Exarchopoulos, cowinner of the acting prize at Cannes this year for Blue Is the Warmest Color/La vie d'Adèle, plays a minor role in this film. Another random tidbit: on the website "This Long Century" (http://www.thislongcentury.com/?p=6172)Porterfield has posted a series of color slides made with a 35mm Nikon between 1959 and 1972 by his grandfather, who casually seems about to give William Eggleston a run for his money. Porterfield believes he has inherited his grandfather's "aesthetic" and way of framing images. Porterfield has been a teacher in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Johns Hopkins University, but now resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
I Used to Be Darker, 90 mins., debuted at Sundance, Jan. 2013. Its theatrical premiere was 27 Sept. at the Charles Theater, Baltimore, followed by IFC Center in NYC 4 Oct. and a roll-out through Nov. at other venues across the country. The film will enter Paris cinemas 25 December 2013. Strand Releasing brings it out on DVD 28 January 2014.
The upcoming "Our Town: Baltimore" screenings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York: Saturday, Dec. 21, 2013, 5:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1; and Monday, Dec. 23, 2013, 4:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1. Also showing: Porterfield's Hamilton and Putty Hill; Barry Levinson's Diner, Tin Men, Avalon, and Liberty Heights and John Waters' Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Polyester, and Hairspray. There'll be O's fans going down the ocean, hon.