Away (A)wake

Reading the article in the Memphis paper (see Reviews section of IMDb), explains a lot. One point in the article is that the movie had 12 characters not 4 in the original cut. During test screenings they realized it was too busy. I suspect editing the film shot into a 4 character version simply did not improve the situation but increased its choppiness. Also the original 12 character layout probably contributed to the incoherence and lack of focused in the script. Trying to do too much is often a formula for failure. The article says there was a two month acting workshop. If more time had been spent on doing a good script they might have made a better film. The acting was mixed. Some of the actors did better than one might expect from untrained actors but others were not very good.

I too noticed the excessive video effects which while sometimes neat were often distracting.

In comparison to Blue Citrus Hearts which overcame its shortcomings by great, nuanced acting and a good focus, this was a great disappointment.

The older lady. Star of the film. But her storyline was confusing because she seemed nutty and spoke in riddles. Also the nutty drug addict old man wandering around that was introduced around 30 minutes in was not a useful character was it because he could shoot all night that he had such a big role? Mostly speaking jibberish and just constantly controlling and confusing the point of the movie? His parts could have been left out because the middle of the movie sort of deadpans. There's also something to be said for not having a real script and making actors ad lib. It doesn't read well without deeper studies of the character and direction. The music and mood and some of the characters stories (that is if you could understand them) were really good. I wouldn't give it a one. I'd like to see it remade.

AWAY (A)WAKE is a very low budget little film directed by Morgan Jon Fox who also wrote the semblance of a script with Suzi Crashcourse, his cinematographer. As in his previous film BLUE CITRUS HEARTS Fox, a film school drop-out, seems to be developing a style and while that style worked fairly well with BLUE CITRUS HEARTS, here it seems to get in the way by making this seemingly self indulgent movie steer so far from a good idea that it is left floundering for an identity.

Ostensibly the 'story' intersects the lives of four characters: a gay high school lad who is reprimanded by his principal for a photo he shot of a moment of kissing with his boyfriend - an incident made into a homophobic circus against which the boy reacts; a grandmother whose husband of thirty years walks out on her leaving her to wander around looking for reasons yet giving verbiage to the need to maintain 'wonder' in our lives; the grandson of the grandmother who also happens to be the first character's boyfriend but is left wandering the streets in his soccer clothes groping for meaning; a older male street person with some insights into madness - or more meaningful views of the need for relating.

Good thoughts, these, but the problem with the film is finding focus and that starts with devising a script that goes beyond pedestrian philosophizing. The obvious untrained actors do their best to make this all work, but they are disrupted by schmaltzy camera work that just pushes drama aside for the sake of effect. The film gives the feeling of having been shot in a day and a night: more time given to concept and production may have saved this strange little interlude into something worth watching. In all it is an annoying hour and a half of loosely associated ideas that never quite gel. Back to BLUE CITRUS HEARTS....that was a better start for Fox. Grady Harp