First time writer/director Adam Reid understands loneliness with his debut film Hello Lonesome, so much so that he captures it in one of the best ways possible - through a series of fragmented vignettes showcasing some attribute of daily life that, on most cases, is generally unremarkable. Loneliness is best defined in films by showing characters going through the motions or making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to basic conversations. Even a simple phone call with someone you met on a dating website, a voicemail you're leaving someone you know won't call you back, or a cantankerous exchange with a delivery boy serve as some of the most noteworthy events of the day when you're by yourself.
Hello Lonesome is a triptych, following six wayward souls and their interactions with one another. One is Bill (Harry Chase), an isolated voice-over artist still broken up about his wife leaving him and his daughter's refusal to return his phone calls. Bill, in the midst of doing a great deal of professional recording, befriends a delivery man (Kamel Boutros) who frequently tolerates Bill's blunt and unpredictable behavior each and every day. Another story follows a young sports fanatic/gambler named Gordon (Nate Smith), who meets and falls in love with a woman named Trish (Traci Hovel) on a dating website. The two strike up an amiable chemistry, basking in their inability to cook but unconditional ability to be there for one another, even when Trish comes down with a life-threatening ailment early in on their relationship. Finally, there's Eleanor (Lynn Cohen), an elderly women who loses her license and subsequently sells her antique car, which we can tell was likely the only thing in her life she was close to. As a result, she relies on her young neighbor Gary (James Urbaniak) to taxi her to different places, as well as listen to her stories about her late husband and spy on the new owner of her vehicle to assure he's taking proper care of it.
All of these stories are rather unconventional when specifics are dissected, but the basic outline and structure of each one is just believable enough to take seriously. Reid doesn't get too wrapped up in specifics as he does with playing with the idea of loneliness, making each story achieve a common ground amongst anyone who has ever felt lonely and isolated, either by choice or by circumstance. We have Bill, who is the epitome of absolute loneliness, where he has no family to turn to and no friends to speak of at the current point in time, Gordon and Trish, who have each found someone they really connect with but will inevitably be back where they started in just a short time, and Eleanor, who is facing the fear of dying without anyone to remember her or any companionship in the final days.
Reid sensitively paints these characters' stories without elements of condescension or a poetic sense of finality. There's an almost observational angle being explored here, showing these lives unfold without the crippling devices such as plot points or point-A-to-point-B progression. This is a very liberal film in the way it delicately takes its time to show these characters, through vignettes rather than carefully structured scenarios. It's almost reasonable to believe that Reid wrote this film using the "stream of consciousness" method in that he simply allowed his mind to bleed on the paper or the keyboard.
Hello Lonesome isn't as dialog-heavy as I personally would've liked, but perhaps that works to capture the aura of these people. Small talk and hesitation is common when one is lonely, for fear of opening up or getting to connected, but there's also the element of being so starved for connection you wind up saying practically anything just to get your words out of your head and into somebody else's. Reid doesn't toy with the latter so much, but in such a short amount of time, he gives us characters worth observing and ideas about loneliness worth contemplating.
Starring: Harry Chase, Nate Smith, Traci Hovel, Lynn Cohen, James Urbaniak, and Kamel Boutros. Directed by: Adam Reid.
