After the Denim

It was a wonderful touching film. It left me wanting more. I love Tom Bower and have always been a fan of his. He was true to form as always. I wanted to just reach through the screen and put my arms around both of them as they handle they're individual struggles that strengthen their love for each other so intensely. They had a love and understanding for each other that can only grow with time and patience that we all long to have and they shared it with us beautifully. The chemistry between Tom Bower and Karen Landry was brilliant. Their characters had a complete acceptance of each other and expressed an unyielding love for one another in the everyday simplicities of just being them. My heart broke being left wondering if she will be OK, knowing the possible outcome. And it screamed Bravo! when he tossed the booze down the drain using every ounce of strength he could muster to simply walk to the sink. I loved Tom's monologue to the young ones in the world who have no real idea what life is truly about just yet. And I loved the strength and grace of Karen's character as she worried more about her husband than herself and put her own fears aside to be able to give him assurance, though we know both of them are terrified of the pending bad news. As the film ends you're left with a feeling of affection for both of them, as if they are family you are genuinely concerned about and wanting to be there for. Wonderful! Powerful! Want more!

After the Denim is a faithful rendering of a Raymond Carver short story about a man coming to grips with his wife's terminal illness, compressed (like Joyce's The Dead) into a single evening. Adaptations of this sort can be tricky, especially since they rely so much on subtext, but this one successfully navigates the small epiphanies without spilling over into sentiment. The nuance is there in the finely tailored performances and humdrum trappings. The filmmakers get great mileage from simple locations: a bland bingo hall is turned into a dramatic space; an ordinary parking lot becomes confrontational. An auspicious performance from first-time writer-director Goyins and longtime producer-director Rosenfelt.

AFTER I watched this film I sat around for maybe half hour. I wasn't really doing any mental gymnastics, more of just basking in the glow of a damn good piece of short cinema. I cannot recommend this film enough. Tom Bower absolutely kills it in this film. So happy to see him take the lead and deliver such a mammoth of a performance. As a Carver fan, I can say this piece handles the troubled author with enough respect and clarity that the themes from the short story are conveyed perfectly. The filmmakers obviously had love for Carver as well as almost each scene is retained with perfect delivery. And where else can you get a poignant drama about Bingo, the most sinister boardgame of them all. Where I ask you!?

Seek out this film. Well worth it for Carver and film lovers alike.

"After the Denim" translates Raymond Carver's short story of the same title to film with an admirable appreciation of Carver's small-town characters. The art direction is exquisite -- the apartment, the clothes, the close-ups, especially having Edith wear a girlish hair style (graying) and James in conservative clothes.

At the same time, the film goes beyond merely translating Carver's story; it brings in some resonances from Carver's longer (original, unedited by Gordon Lish) version of the story called "If It Please You" and updates the "hippies" of Carver's day to Gen X (or Y?) kids who drive an old Cadillac and look at James Packer with insouciance his obsessive, suspicious behavior deserves.

Read the stories in the Library of America edition, then see the film.

After The Denim, based on the short story by Raymond Carver, a new film co-directed and adapted for the screen by Gregory Goyins marks the screenwriter's directorial debut. Impressive from start to finish, After The Denim suggests the start of a very promising new film-making career in the works.

Ill at ease, James Packer finds his normal state of discomfiture further aroused when, arriving late for bingo, he and his wife's seats are occupied by a young couple, one that may or may not have been themselves decades earlier. James' bitterness is apparent immediately upon seeing them. This sets up a dramatic standoff, which is carried out with brilliance, as James confronts them for what he perceives to be cheating. The pettiness of the (imagined) offense is exponentially magnified in James' uneasy world, where the loss of his own son (years earlier), and the imminence of his own decline factor strongly in the dark prism of his imagination.

Goyins takes a big risk here. As James and Edith Packer approach the bingo hall, I found myself asking, where can this go? And indeed, without the strength of impeccable direction and timing, the bingo-hall showdown could have foundered in a mire of banality. Casting, acting and film editing all factor to magnify the intensity of the moment, lending a sinister aspect to an otherwise ordinary young man and his date. The encounter between Packer and the young couple, wholly successful, takes us deeper into James Packers' fragile psyche.

As the Packers approach the bingo hall, James declares, 'I don't feel lucky tonight'. These words, finally, will be prophetic when, upon returning home, the specter of imminent tragedy is unveiled. James Packers' imagination races back to the youth and freedom of the couple at the bingo hall; his bitterness now displaced on them. If only...

After the Denim is a study on loss, age and the toxic effects of envy. Still, James Packer arouses our sympathy in spite of his failings, and in this there is much to be admired - and in doing so locates the part of elder agoniste appropriately into a length panoply of such characters - who's struggle is to remain meaningful in an age where one's relevance is marginal at best. We are reminded of Laertes, Odysseus' father, who, awaiting his sons' return from foreign adventure erodes the slow erosion of self that accompanies the loss of his son. There would be no harvest of vigor in the person of his child.

A short film, with finely tuned performances distills with maximum economy the breadth of the characters' experience, delivering completely on the strength of Carver's short story.