Milk and Honey

I can't recommend this film enough but I know not everyone likes digital films made at a low budget. The difference here is that you can see a great talent working out his style and you get a brilliant story with it.

The film follows a married couple over one night in New York in a kind of dogma meets After Hours kind of way. They fight and each character is revealed to have serious mental problems to go with their emotional problems.

This is clever because you first think the husband is crazy and then you think his wife is crazy and then you realize (eventually - not too soon) that we are all crazy if you look at us the right (or wrong) way.

What I loved about this story was the way it kept its sense of humour for the darkest emotional moments - not that thats the only time it is funny but that's where its biggest punches are and its right there to the end. Watching him washing his trousers made me nearly wet mine.

The whole circular nature of the film - every character tires to escape another character and runs right back into them again - delivers this theme of escape only coming from facing up to whatever we run from. Its a smart theme and delivers both emotion and a kind of thriller pace and the writer and director have great fun with it. A really surprising movie that I can't wait to see again basically.

I saw this movie at the TriBeCa Film Festival in New York City. The film is shot in the Big Apple and portrays a wealthy couple, Rick & Joyce, in their mid-40's who are going through what might seem to be obligatory marriage difficulties.

However, there is one wrinkle. They are both certifiably insane. Rick is shown as someone who in the backstory has undergone mental health treatment and even institutionalization, and Joyce seems to thrive on nurturing his dysfunction.

The opening scene in the movie is that the couple is hosting a party at their lavish apartment. (Anyone who lives in that kind of apartment in NYC, is filthy rich). Anyway, the party is supposed to be Rick's "comeback" event, as his co-workers and boss are there wishing him a speedy recovery and telling him to take all the time he needs. However, it is clear that Rick is still extremely disturbed and has gone off his meds as he goes into a violent rant about the tie that Joyce bought, and begins to ramble about re-proposing to his wife in front of his guests. The scene of the party guests looking incredibly uncomfortable as Rick makes a jackass of himself, and wishing they were someplace else, before bolting the party, is absolutely precious. I felt just as uncomfortable as the party guests, secure in my theater seat.

Anyway, Rick then bolts the house and goes on a psychotic binge all night, accosting his girlfriend, his shrink, and a complete stranger named Moses, who was the only compelling character. On another completely unrealistic scene, Rick barges into his psychiatrists home at 1:00 a.m. yelling at him that he is a bad shrink. Considering how violent and drunk he was, the fact that the shrink did not call the authorities and have him taken into custody for his own safety give ample evidence that he is a bad shrink. Meanwhile, Joyce also goes off on a psychotic binge in the streets of New York, which also made me equally uncomfortable.

If the movie was about two crazy people in the streets of New York, then I would buy into it. However, the director was present at the film and engaged in question and answers with the audience. He claimed that the movie was supposed to be about how this couple work out their marriage difficulties, and not about their mental diseases. That's not the movie he made.

It's too bad, because had the filmaker made the characters a little less insane, and still go through the same experiences, then the movie would have been quite compelling. Unfortunately, the characters were so unbelievably crazy, that it just devolved into a freakshow. By the end of the film, I simply didn't care about the characters.

On a technical note, the movie was shot on digital video and presented on Windows Media Player, by a computer. The effect was that the movie was too out of focus. They need to work on that technology.

Although most low-budget indies rarely offer more than off-the-wall storytelling, every now and then a 'star' is born and this is one of those cases. Clint Jordan is on a hot streak (most recently appeared in the still undistributed "Down to the Bone") and after 15 years in the business may get the 'overnight' success he has earned.

As 'Rick', Jordan shows off a full range of emotion detailing the efforts of recently hospitalized mental patient to adjust back into society. The film opens with a 'welcome' party of sorts with Rick's friends and co-workers but the stress seems to be a bit too much. After obsessing about his tie he breaks up the party by proposing marriage to the love of his life ... his wife. When she doesn't accept a shouting match ensues and Rick takes to the streets alone.

Rick's journeys and the people he meets along the way expose the deepseated feelings many mentally ill people are forced to deal with everyday, including continual suicidal ideation. Where this film goes wrong (in the second half) is by splitting the attention of the audience between Rick and the unrealistic adventures of his wife and a younger man she meets at a party. These sections of the film are almost absurd in context and distract from Rick's very realistic struggles.

Maybe next time budding 'indie auteur' Joe Maggio will realize that one interesting character (as perfectly performed by Clint Jordan) is all the audience needs. As they say in film school - K*I*S*S (keep it simple ...), cause sometimes less is more, a lot more.