MARCH 26 » 5:45p
MARCH 31 » 5:30p
NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE with ALEX ROSS PERRY
2009, USA, 75 min.
Director/Screenwriter: Alex Ross Perry (in attendance)
Cast: Riley O’Brien, Kate Lyn Sheil, Eugene Mirman, Ben Shapiro, Bruno Meyrick Jones
Tyrone S., a U.S. army solider, wanders through an unidentified wilderness searching for missing rockets. Recurring characters (figments of his imagination? figures from his past?) show up offering advice and making small talk. An old lover reminds Tyrone of their life back home and what he’s left behind.
A little context goes a long way toward understanding Alex Ross Perry’s enigmatic Impolex. Inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, the film tells the story, albeit obliquely, of Operation Paperclip, an actual World War II mission to locate undetonated German V2 rockets in the forests of Europe.
But to say it’s just about that is too reductive. It’s about a lot of other things too: our connections to objects and to principles and to people, and how tenuous our grip on reality can be. And it manages to be about all these things without much ever happening. The plot of Impolex can only be discerned dimly, as if through a dream-like fog.
I realize saying a film is virtually plotless won’t sound like a ringing endorsement to a lot of folks, but I can’t stress enough that Impolex is an extremely compelling and rewarding experience if you give yourself over to the film’s hallucinatory rhythms and deliberate pacing.
Riley O’Brien delivers an somnambulistic performance as Tyrone. While he’s admittedly an aquired taste, it’s easy to see why Perry wrote the part for his unique charms. Kate Lyn Sheil deserves a special mention too. Toward the end of the film, she delivers a stunning nine-minute monologue in a single unbroken close-up. She has a penetratingly honest screen presence and it is a joy to watch her perform.
In the vein of classic midnight movies like David Lynch’s Eraserhead, Impolex is a puzzling and darkly humorous tone poem that worms its way into your brain and will stick with you long after you leave the theatre.
— Bryan McKay
PLAYING WITH
Little Ride Up on Clouds
Rafael Moraes
10 min.
Two women, one hot day, a slap. Music, action. This one-take oddity will test your patience and your sanity.
