SouthOH-icon

If you spend enough time at film fes­ti­vals, you quickly learn what a “fes­ti­val movie” is.  This descrip­tion refers to a film that rarely escapes beyond the film fes­ti­val cir­cuit to find a gen­eral audi­ence.  That’s mainly because the film­mak­ers who cre­ate such films are rarely con­cerned with crossover suc­cess and are more devoted to their per­sonal aes­thetic obses­sions.  Such films rarely cost much money yet fre­quently have impres­sive actors in the cast, because they are cat­nip to actors who are into their craft.

In other words, a fes­ti­val movie is uncon­ven­tional type of expe­ri­ence that puts demands on the viewer in a way a main­stream film never would.  That said, such an expe­ri­ence can be reward­ing if the viewer’s inter­ests synch up with those of the film­maker.  That brings us to South Of Heaven: it is very much a fes­ti­val movie but  it’s the kind of fes­ti­val movie that genre peo­ple can relate to because it speaks their language.

The sim­plest way to explain the plot of South Of Heaven is to describe it as a story of two broth­ers in trou­ble.  Roy Coop (Adam Née) is a nice guy and aspir­ing writer who fin­ishes a tour of duty and comes home to move in with his brother Dale (Aaron Née).  Problem one: Dale is nowhere to be found.  Problem two: a pair of hoods (Jonathan Gries, Thomas Jay Ryan) show up look­ing for Dale, who they claim has kid­napped a wealthy hood’s daugh­ter.  They’re con­vinced that Roy is Dale and begin work­ing him over in bru­tal ways to get the loca­tion of the daughter.

Meanwhile, Dale is deal­ing with prob­lems of his own.  He is the ter­ri­fied “part­ner” of Mad Dog Mantee (Shea Whigham), a qui­etly deranged hood who is respon­si­ble for the kid­nap­ping.  He is deter­mined to get a ran­som for the girl — and just as deter­mined, for rea­sons not imme­di­ately spec­i­fied, that Dale be his part­ner in this crime.  What fol­lows is best left to the audi­ence to dis­cover for them­selves… but these two broth­ers will meet again and their reunion will be a sur­real high-stakes affair.

The end result is a curi­ous but intrigu­ing mix of styles and moods.  Writer/director J.L. Vara allows his imag­i­na­tion to run wild but his plot­ting is highly dis­ci­plined, with char­ac­ter and story info revealed in a piece­meal way that keeps sur­pris­ing view­ers up the very end.  It is infused with a streak of the absurd but it is played totally straight, no mat­ter how wild the sto­ry­line becomes.  There is a note­wor­thy amount of bru­tal vio­lence but Vara plays it out in a sleight-of-hand man­ner, lean­ing on sug­ges­tion to get at the viewer in a way that is more psy­cho­log­i­cal than vis­ceral.  The most inter­est­ing ele­ment of the film is that it uses min­i­mal­is­tic sets, includ­ing painted back­drops for out­door scenes, but its pho­tog­ra­phy makes bold use of pri­mary col­ors and also mixes in bits of ani­ma­tion at key junctures.

Simply put, South Of Heaven is not a film for the gen­eral audi­ence.  Its blend of pulpy crime-story arche­types, black humor, bru­tal vio­lence and will­ful weird­ness is likely to baf­fle the casual viewer.  That said, it’s not a dif­fi­cult sell to the cult movie audi­ence.  Vara draws the nar­ra­tive and visual lex­i­con for his film from sources like film noir, the giallo, Tex Avery car­toons and Coen Brothers-esque dark comedy.

Even bet­ter, he comes up with off­beat but effec­tive com­bi­na­tions of these ele­ments, cre­at­ing a styl­ized land­scape that can be sur­pris­ingly hyp­notic.  The cam­er­a­work from Darren Genet is ele­gant (look for those 360-degree pan­ning shots) and an unex­pect­edly lush musi­cal score by Russ Howard III is ele­gant yet obses­sive, cre­at­ing a mood some­where between Danny Elfman and Blue Velvet–era Angelo Badalamenti.

Best of all, Vara plays his mate­r­ial straight.  Despite the film’s high level of styl­iza­tion, the direc­tor avoids the temp­ta­tion of wink­ing at the audi­ence in an “ain’t I clever?” way.  He estab­lishes the film’s odd­ball rules early on and sticks by them to the end.

The same can be said for the cast.  Shea Whigham gives an impres­sive per­for­mance as Mad Dog, cre­at­ing a char­ac­ter that is men­ac­ing and witty by turns with­out ever rais­ing his voice or going for cheap the­atrics.  His per­for­mance is a pure mix­ture of pres­ence and com­mit­ment to his odd­ball role — and he just kills it in every scene.  Gries and Ryan also impress as the thug duo, play­ing their out­size roles in a con­trolled man­ner that hits a sim­i­lar com­bi­na­tion of humor and menace.

Elsewhere, Elina Lowensohn of Nadja fame daz­zles as a femme fatale type who takes a curi­ous inter­est in Roy’s predica­ment — she’s got a show­stop­ping mono­logue at an impor­tant moment in the film that she nails — and a deglammed Diora Baird adds a needed note of sweet­ness as an ignored girl­friend who becomes Dale’s love inter­est.  That said, the core of the piece in terms of act­ing are the broth­ers Née.  They offer sub­tle per­for­mances that are comic and dra­matic by turns, under­play­ing in a sly way that makes them stand out amidst the more styl­ized char­ac­ter types.  Adam in par­tic­u­lar under­goes an impres­sive trans­for­ma­tion as the film pro­gresses while Aaron shows an unusu­ally skill­ful use of body lan­guage to express his character’s emotions.

In sum­ma­tion, South Of Heaven is chal­leng­ing but reward­ing view­ing, a rare kind of “fes­ti­val movie” project whose sense of eccen­tric­ity plays into the inter­ests of the cult movie crowd.  If you’re up for its chal­lenges, it deliv­ers a mem­o­rable and worth­while experience.