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How entertaining? ★★★☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 19 May 2015
This a movie review of SPRING. |
“You need to change up your environment,” Mike (Vinny Curran) to Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci)
Your mother is your home; wherever she is that is the base - the winning central conceit of THE NECESSARY DEATH OF CHARLIE COUNTRYMAN, staring Shia LaBeouf. On her passing, the TRANSFORMERS’s lead travels to Romania heartbroken and is sucked into a romantic crime adventure. SPRING opens on protagonist Evan watching by her bedside as his mother dies. Triggering a similar crisis, he gets out of metaphorical Dodge City leaving mild-agro in his wake. Europe is also the destination, this time Italy. Horror tropes wait. Mumblecore goes body dysmorphia.
Your mother is your home; wherever she is that is the base - the winning central conceit of THE NECESSARY DEATH OF CHARLIE COUNTRYMAN, staring Shia LaBeouf. On her passing, the TRANSFORMERS’s lead travels to Romania heartbroken and is sucked into a romantic crime adventure. SPRING opens on protagonist Evan watching by her bedside as his mother dies. Triggering a similar crisis, he gets out of metaphorical Dodge City leaving mild-agro in his wake. Europe is also the destination, this time Italy. Horror tropes wait. Mumblecore goes body dysmorphia.
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Striking camerawork (using off the shelf drones?) captures the beauty of a Mediterranean town while avoiding tourist carefree lighting. Add BREAKERS to the title if you want that kind of hedonistic caper. Washed out cinematography reflects the grief soaked and rudderless Evan. Leaving Berkley University to care for his mother, and now free-floating, he hooks up with a couple of lairy Brit lads fulfilling the stereotype of a certain segment of the population while on holiday, “Bro, I f***ing blazed the wi-fi code”. Their narrative purpose is to get the lead to the same destination as Louise (Nadia Hilker), a mysterious feisty local beauty. (SPRING does not side-step the genre flaw of having naked women sans gender equality.)
Gentle courtship is the order of the day. Drawn inexorably to the stunner, Evan gets a job at a farm for board and pocket money to allow him to stay – an American illegal immigrant. Studying genetics at the regional university, Louise is no airhead dream girl. Intriguingly, simultaneously no-nonsense yet holding cards close to her chest, the audience eventually see why the latter. She is some sort of ancient mythical creature. Neat effects, as Louise mutates uncontrollably, one point Nosferatu-like and then another time showing squid tendencies. (Test how pervy/open-minded you are by ascertaining if she is still attractive in her different forms.)
Pop culture bugbear: When a human has lived for centuries, literature/television/cinema/theatre seldom conveys what having witnessed so much would do to alter outlook and humanity. Really only John Carter’s superman in WATCHMEN has the necessary detachment. Come on creatives let’s do better.
Where IT FOLLOWS brilliantly used horror to talk about sexual anxiety, SPRING missed a trick by not going CHASING AMY and weaving male neuroses into loving entanglement. Louise is powerful, despatching at one point the sort of man who gives the gender a bad name. Subtext modification would have benefitted the film a more gripping structure and pay off. What about going INNOCENT BLOOD role reversal? (Charlize Theron repeatedly rescuing Brandon Flowers in the ‘Crossfire’ music video would make for an ace feature film.) Twee climax seals the singular diversion – unlikely to require a repeat viewing.
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