Scalene

This Rashomon rip-off does alright with its first two stories, but falls on its ass with the third. Paige's story is so completely ridiculous, so far from the realm of reality, that it embarrasses the rest of the film to be a part of it. The movie does a pretty good job of manipulating emotions until then, but when the turn happens, everything becomes stupid, unbelievable, and ridiculous.

This is not a thriller, it's like a Lifetime movie that attempts to tug at your heartstrings but absolutely fails in the execution. You may experience the first 20 minutes of the film and be impressed, but it throws away all its credibility shortly after.

A lot of people would not like this film, and I did find it flawed, but not for the same reason a lot of other people probably do. A scalene is triangle with three unequal sides. And this is three stories that are "unequal", not only in that they contradict each other somewhat in the famous "Rashomon" style, but they're also unequal in length. The mother's story runs about half an hour, the brain-damaged son's story is very brief, and story of the young sociology student who claims to have been raped takes up most of the movie. If one side of a scalene triangle exceeds the length of the other two combined, you obviously can't "close" the triangle. I'd have to go back and look at the running times of the three stories, but regardless the director chooses not to "close the triangle". The ending is ambiguous and leaves a lot of things unresolved and a lot of key questions unanswered.

Of course, this infuriates a lot of people who want a tidy resolution and clear answers. And they get upset with the director and start throwing around the word "pretentious", as if it's a worse crime to try unsuccessfully to do something new than to just do the same old thing. The style here is a little pretentious. The first story is told backwards, "Memento" style, which is a little too much, and the end also is a little bit pseudo-profound (a term I like better than pretentious). But ambiguity and moral ambiguity, the existence of multiple and differing points of view, no one really knowing everything, and a lot of things being left unresolved is actually very REALISTIC, much more so than the clear and tidy resolution of most movies. It's ironic that people today love "reality" shows where a clear narrative with often totally manufactured conflict and a tidy resolution or "closure" is imposed on reality. You can make reality fictional, but if you give a fictional movie like this too many aspects of reality, people get upset.

Anyway, the narrative structure of the movie I found interesting and even the ending didn't bother me. The first story is good (despite aping "Memento") and the disjointed second story genuinely seems to be "told by idiot" in its complete narrative confusion. The problem I had was the third story is simply not believable. The character of "Paige" is good, a naive young person trying to do the right thing and making bad decisions. But I didn't think ANYBODY would make some of the foolish and downright perplexing decisions she does. The performances of the actors playing the mother (Margo Martindale) and son are spot on, but the performance of Hanna Hall, who plays "Paige", is very uneven, great at times and quite awkward at others. I think a lot of it though is character and the direction, not the actress. Hall was great some years ago in "The Virgin Suicides" and she has had a more interesting career than most actresses. taking on a lot of offbeat roles and actually doing nudity even though she is not your typical Hollywood-style "hot", but looks much more like a normal girl (most Hollywood actresses who are "hot" seem to just coast on it and can be very boring as actresses). But I don't think any young actress could have been entirely successful in this infuriating role of a character who is much more realistic than usual, but who often makes completely unbelievable decisions.

This is flawed movie for sure, but that does not mean it is any way a bad one.

There are essentially three characters in "Scalene". And with respect to the writers for their rather ingenious title, we can pretend there are three points of view. The first half of the film is spent with the mother, but mostly told backwards in time. She's seeking justice and revenge for the incarceration of her mentally-handicapped son charged with rape. Then we hear from the son and then the abused girl herself.

The mother, played by Margo Martindale, is stressed out to her wits ends and is trying to find someone who can understand what she's going through trying to raise her brain-damaged son who can't speak all on her own. The interesting part about her sequences was telling it in reverse. We first see her after the conviction, then immediately following the incident itself and then a number of scenes leading up to the incident. At this point, we have no idea what happened but it proved to be interesting enough that our curiosity was piqued and tension was high waiting for the big reveal.

Then we hear from the son, Jakob (Adam Scarimbolo), but of course he can't speak. And based on the handful of random, bizarrely shot, meaningless scenes, we can assume he doesn't understand much of the world around him.

Then comes the interesting part of the film – the victim's sequences. Paige Alexander (Hannah Hall) is, at times, an average college student. She's looking for a part time job, one that should advance her in her chosen career of social care. Young and inexperienced, Jakob's mother hires her to take care of Jakob a couple of hours a week because she seems honest and caring. The similarly inexperienced actress Hannah Hall (who got her start as the "young Jenny" in "Forrest Gump") will hopefully go far based on her powerful but extremely tender performance of a girl who was always just trying to figure out the right thing to do. And she more than held her own against the heavy-hitting Martindale.

Paige was an interesting character because she's figuring out just as we are figuring out what is going on. She has a cold respect for her parents but can't turn to them for help since they have lost touch with reality. Her friends haven't experienced what she has experienced and would be unable to offer advice. Paige is strong and independent, but she's forced into a situation where she's scared and alone.

Unfortunately, the problems for "Scalene" come when some of the actions venture far from credible or realistic and sympathy for the characters is all of a sudden hard to come by. But worse is the editing, and/or acting, in the revenge scenes. Characters are hit over the head and fall down the stairs in such a cheesy and artificial manner that it resembles a super low-budget, unintentionally funny, ridiculously stupid horror movie. It is better than that, but only when we've connected to the characters and we're following Paige waiting for the ultimate twist. Before and after that, the film loses most of its edge.

A perceptual thriller told from three points-of-view revolving around the rape of a female college student by a mentally handicapped man and his mother's subsequent revenge after his incarceration.

I have to give this film some credit. I started off not liking it, thinking the acting was poor and the characters unlikeable. The film quality was also somewhat suspect (though this might just be because I was watching a screener and not a "real" release).

As it progressed, I still found the mother's acting to be a bit weak, but the other characters more than made up for her shortcomings. And then the film goes for an emotional punch, and another one, and one more... the characters remain unlikeable, but this turns out to be the beauty of the film. We find it hard to sympathize with the mother, despite her years of hardship. We find it hard to sympathize with the caretaker as her exploitation motives come more and more to the forefront. The only one who seems to come out unscathed is the disabled boy...

Films without heroes are hard to judge. I think people generally walk away feeling dirty or empty inside and therefore want to give the film a bad rating or review. In fact, if they do this, I feel they missed the point. Any film that is able to affect you, make you feel empty or dirty, is powerful. Films make us feel happy or sad all the time, but few really present humanity in all its blemished notoriety.

I want to congratulate Zack Parker on this film. While it is by no means a perfect film, it is a powerful film and an emotional uppercut.

I was invited to a screening of this movie by a friend, and when I heard I was going to be seeing a low budget, independent film I did everything short of feign illness to get out of having to attend. On the way to the theater my mind filled with images of ridiculous drive-in fare and late, late, late night monster movies of the sort where you can see the zipper on the creature where the "actor" climbs inside, along with a multitude of other cringe-worthy scenes that come to mind when someone says "low-budget". Bottom line, I expected everything to be horrible. What I got instead with Scalene was a taut, heart-wrenching character study with such a degree of emotional impact that I was left still shaken the following day.

The story is told from three people's perspectives, and as can be expected each of their individual stories fills in gaps left vacant by the others'. This isn't the first time I've seen multiple perspectives in a movie, but as far as I can recall it's the first time I've seen three separate perspectives told in such singularly distinct ways. The lead actress, Margo Martindale, is simply marvelous. Her name might not be familiar to you, but you'll recognize her from everything from Dexter to Million Dollar Baby. The movie also stars Hanna Hall, the girl who played young Jenny from Forrest Gump, and my goodness has she ever grown up. The actor, Adam Scarimbolo, who plays the mentally handicapped son as described in the IMDb synopsis, (I'm not giving anything further away), I recognized from the movie A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. His character in Scalene is unable to speak, yet even with no dialogue his performance is breath-taking.

Back to the issue of this being a low-budget movie. There was nothing cheap or unprofessional about anything in this movie, contrary to what I had expected. I noticed on the IMDb page that Scalene was made with $150,000. I don't know anything about the business of making movies, but I had previously thought that movies cost tens of millions to make. Most seem to. Knowing now that quality has very little to do with the budget I wonder, unless there are lots of expensive special effects, where does the money go for big-budget movies except into people's pockets? I could not recommend this movie more, not only because it shattered every stereotype I had previously held about low-budget, independent films, but because it is a first rate movie with a truly captivating story.