You've got to fight for this, Dad

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Films of 2021 - half way through!

#25 : The Killing Of Two Lovers

A humiliating marital breakdown triggers a riveting portrait of male rage in Robert Machoian’s thought-provoking thriller, starring Clayne Crawford and Sepideh Moafi.

I know absolutely nothing about this - I'm looking forward to the "thought-provoking thriller" bit, but can't say the "riveting portrait of male rage" had me particularly excited at the prospect.

Well, I can't say I was expecting my first thought to be "what aspect ratio is this filmed in then?" (4:3 - in order to give greater focus to the actor's faces, apparently)  but the film soon grabbed my attention - it's got an intriguing start to it where the lead character, David (Clayne Crawford) is pointing a gun at two people asleep in bed before climbing out of the window.  And the rest of the film basically follows David in his attempts to keep his family together in the face of uncertain (and arguably unreasonable) behaviour from his wife.

It's really Clayne Crawford's film and he does a good job as a man who is trying his best but knows he's losing control of the situation, doesn't understand what he can do to change things and ends up having nowhere to go.  I couldn't fault the "portrait of male rage" description of the film, but for most of the film the only real "thought-provoking thriller" aspect appears to be "how nuts is he going to go?" - but actually things don't quite work out the way you're expecting them to (particularly given the film's title).  

Playing Niki (his wife) Sepideh Moafi does a good job with what she's given but it's not really much more than a couple of scenes.  The kids all put in good natural performances, but Avery Pizzuto as Jess, the eldest, deserves a namecheck for her very fine representation of teenage angst, anger, uncertainty and insecurity - one to watch for the future, methinks.

The director is very interested in the actors', and particularly Clayne Crawford's, face - as well as the unusual choice of aspect ratio, he often keeps the background out of focus or, in a couple of  scenes, the foreground.  There are also some long tracking shots and some interesting long static shots taken from a distance - and a surprising amount of the film takes place in the truck (often with a surprising number of people in shot!).

The film features such fantastically impressive scenery - lots of use of wide open spaces, but they feel strangely compressed because of the aspect ratio.  There's an interesting use of sound as well - often made indistinct, either to denote distance or rage.  In a lot of ways the whole thing often feels like a film-making theory exercise, with a variety of "clever" techniques being deployed - I wouldn't say it distracts from the film, but it is a bit jarring (possibly intentionally to depict David's state of mind).

The film isn't exactly overflowing with content but is only 84 minutes long, so it doesn't drag and features some impressive acting which holds your attention.  I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, but I didn't hate it either and it certainly featured some interesting scenes.  It also has the most amusingly amateur closing titles, which feature a spelling mistake and last no more than a minute - a Marvel film, this is not!

At the time of writing, the film is available to stream on all the usual channels.  I'm not entirely sure exactly who would enjoy this - but someone will, so I hope they find it!

#26 - Beautiful, but lacking in content
#24 - A very enjoyable film