After Fall, Winter

"After Fall, Winter" asks challenging questions about the connection between our traumatic pasts and present, and the coping mechanisms we invent or latch onto. It is deeply interested in pain, in all aspects, and in particular grief.

Once asked, however, the film has absolutely no interest in exploring any further, much less actually offer any answers. More on that later.

Eric Shaeffer has many talents. As a writer, he writes incredibly naturalistic dialog. As a director, not surprisingly, he wrangles incredibly naturalistic performances from his actors. As an actor, he's completely at ease leading by example - he engages his fellow actors by being naturalistic, and *almost* sells himself as how he probably imagines himself to be.

Trouble is, rather than the whole being greater than, or at the very least adding up to, the sum of its parts, you get the distinct sense that if he could relinquish control over at least ONE of those creative endeavours, he might actually be onto something good.

His poor editor. I'm fairly certain he was just two hands and an editing suite. Rather than being allowed to fashion the film in a way that somehow dug deeper into our human condition, or actually imposing a structure that could've made "After Fall, Winter" a much more disciplined, enlarging work, he had to be basically a technician piecing together a reel of how fascinating, interesting, talented, funny, raw, real, honest Eric Shaeffer is.

This is nothing against Eric Shaeffer, not on a personal level nor on any kind of professional-jealousy level. In fact, he was absolutely right in his speech before the NYC premiere at The Quad - it is incredibly difficult to get an indie film shown in the movie theaters these days, and I applaud him tremendously for ignoring the naysayers and the detractors, of which I'm just one more.

But we all have to eventually put up, or shut up. Mr Shaeffer, if you're reading, like I said above, you're a talented guy. But you have to realise that you're actually dooming yourself by not trusting others and letting their creative energies influence what you could become. Right now, you're just trapped in your vision of yourself, and you can't see that it's dragging you down.

He says he'll make a part of the "seasonal" series once every 15 years. Perhaps "After Winter, Spring", in 2027, will be the one where an older and wiser Mr. Shaeffer realises this, and unleashes the true, talented dramatist within.

Lizzie Brochere was just about perfect. With her excellent command of the English language that sometimes needed subtle correction, to her vulnerability and an inner sadness that made you want to hold and protect her, she was great. I would see anything she was in. Her counterpart, writer/director Schaeffer, was annoying. As a struggling, depressed, overly self-absorbed writer, he apparently had one extremely successful novel and could never achieve the same level of success again. Lizzie relates that she did read his novel and found it wonderful, revealing an intimate, sensitive, honest portrait of the writer. Somehow, the qualities that he exhibited back then were long gone. He was anything but lovable, happy, confident or worthy of this much younger woman's love and admiration. Also, he was broke and owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and still had the use of a dozen credit cards. The teenage girl that Lizzie was caring for was also excellent. As for the gypsy woman and her young son, they were very believable to me. If you are depressed or impatient, do not watch this movie, unless you cheer up when you see that other people can be a lot more screwed up than you are.

The film captured my interest one morning before work, as do all films set in Paris. I love film noir which this has some traits of, even though I can't relate to a down and out writer, who likes to be tied up and spanked, but it is counter-culture for sure. The female lead was much better in her portrayal of the dominatrix with a soft spot for a terminally ill child she cared for in a hospice? The plot was all over the place with the introduction of her mother who was mentally ill and beaten by her husband. However, this could have been a good movie if there was some shred of redemption or salvation at it's end. Terrible ending, with no satisfaction for having wasted 90 minutes of my life!

If Fall was a romantic exploration of a love was that was not meant to be, this sequel from filmmaker/actor Schaeffer is a deeper and darker trip down the rabbit hole that may leave you thinking, in the words of The Who, "love ain't for keeping". Schaeffer takes his own character forward in time where we see him living in dejected squalor. Hope comes in the form of an invitation from friends to travel to Paris France where he once again finds love with an unlikely mate. From there, Schaeffer finds truth, humor, pain and passion by digging deep into the psychology and sexuality of his characters. It's a stunning, masterful film and one that will be with me and even haunt me for a long time.

After Fall, Winter isn't a perfect movie, but the levels it goes to examine relationships at their most delicate hits home with anyone. Schaeffer has an amazing ability to create three dimensional characters who's flaws and problems feel real. To me that is the best of After Fall, Winter - the characters and world created. We don't have heroes with "first world problems," we have people we have seen in our everyday lives, right up there on the screen. The cast did an amazing job at accomplishing this task.

A very impressive character study, I would recommend this film to anyone sick of watching rich people fall in love in NYC and live happily ever after (which I hope is the majority of film lovers).