Clementine (Lara Gallagher, 2019) (Patreon)

In 1995, painter David Salle directed his one and only feature film, Search and Destroy. It was utterly forgettable. (Who'd have thought that of that cohort, Julian Schnabel would have the talent for movies?) But there's one line I often think about when watching films like Clementine. Dennis Hopper's self-help guru tells his listeners, "just because it happened to you doesn't make it interesting."

I can't say for certain that there is an autobiographical streak in Clementine, but experience tells me there's a better-than-zero chance. A mood piece from Tribeca, this strikes me as one of a number of recent films that takes some obvious cues from Kelly Reichardt but lacks the finesse or formal control to really do anything particularly meaningful with that influence. So as our protagonists wander through the Oregon woods and laze on the dock by the lake, the surroundings are pressed into service as undergraduate literary symbols -- liminal space, zone of uncertainty -- and not really allowed to assert themselves cinematically.

Twenty-something Karen (Otmara Marrero) has just been dumped by her girlfriend D., a significantly older, apparently successful artist (Lost's Sonya Walger, who only appears in the final reel). Out of despondency, Karen leaves L.A. to break into D.'s lake house. Once there, she finds a very young girl, Lana (current It Girl Sydney Sweeney) hanging out around the house, and the two youngish women strike up an uneasy rapport. Lana claims to be 19, but this is clearly a lie. Karen, who we hear D. call "Little" on an old voicemail, is suddenly in a pseudo-big-sister position, and is unsure how to handle this newfound power.

Gallagher clearly wants to examine various dynamics among older and younger women, how queerness in no way obviates inequity or gameplaying, and how the sudden presence of a man (the young caretaker, played by Will Brittain) forces an almost reflexive slide into compulsive heterosexual attention-seeking. A more complicated film would have considered class relations as well as the vicissitudes of desire, since Karen was clearly living well as long as D. wanted her, and is now struggling again since her successful lover has chucked her aside. But Clementine is more interested in [SPOILER] dangling the specter of pedophilia and then short-circuiting it, as if to insist than a predatory cycle has now been broken. Also, women can be fucked up to each other, but men are always worse.

It's all tediously schematic, and feels a bit like high-toned revenge on an abusive ex. Your mileage may vary.