Chemical Cut

You should watch this if you were a model and want to remember how much you hated it and it wasn't what you hoped for. I can't believe I sat through half of it.

I ended up watching this really segmented on Amazon to make the film last longer. You know, when you have something that's really great and want to ration in order to increase your net pleasure? That was what I experienced. Beautiful cinematography, wonderful acting. It felt like a documentary of my experience living in L.A. back in the day. I'm not model material, but neither is the protagonist (as the viewer comes to find out). I never knew what modeling was really like, so I think this does give an accurate portrayal of all the difficulties and lies in the industry, which I really enjoyed. I love revelation films. Bonus: you might laugh a lot. It's really great. Oddly, this film resonated with my male friends, but made my female friends uncomfortable. Why? I don't know. Anyway, I thought this was excellent and would highly recommend to anyone interested in current American independent cinema.

A perfect example of what a 'budget' movie can achieve with a first class director and writers.

Director/writer: Marjorie Conrad has created a story of an immature young girl wanting something out of her life she slowly discovers that she is woefully unprepared to meet. Everyone, even her best friend, talks down to her which only feeds her insecurities.

Conrad has created a visually abstract and lonely environment for the main character's journey into the 'modeling' world and it cold reception for the nobodies knocking at it's door.

As an American independent film I was amazed. Most independent film that comes from America is overly abrasive and circumvents any true approach to film as an art. European film tends to be more artistic, and it might simply be a cultural thing for our film to elicit thought instead of relaying on cheap "thrills" and visual chaos. Despite the brighter lighting and taking place in California, I would classify this as my own coined term "euphoric film noir". The subtle darkness establishes an intrinsic connection to the characters without force. The greater brightness balances this, but cannot be accurately described as "light". Seeing that this is very hard to establish in any film, this is a real achievement for a first feature film. I can recommend this for the European crowd looking to find an American film that doesn't seem very American.

Wow, this is a brilliant freshman effort from Conrad, who apparently was on Top Model and decided to disillusion the rest of us with this darkly funny and disturbing portrait piece. It was both heartbreaking and hilarious at times, and truly gets under your skin if, like me, you can relate to being a naive newcomer to an industry that aggressively whitewashes its depravity.