Slow Machine (2020, Paul Felten & Joe Denardo) (Patreon)

57/100

One of those singular, offbeat micro-indies that's consistently intriguing but never quite solidifies into a satisfying whole. It works primarily as a showcase for Stephanie Hayes, who seems as if she ought to be part of the NYC stable that includes Kate Lyn Sheil, Sophia Takal, Hannah Gross, etc., but who in fact has previously appeared only in a single short 15 years ago. Is she daunted by this dearth of on-camera experience? Reader, she is not...though, to be fair, she's playing a character who seems to perceive every moment of her waking existence as an audition opportunity of some kind. That idea's potent enough to make the film's vague element of mystery seem an unnecessary distraction; while I thoroughly enjoyed Stephanie and Gerard's verbal sparring matches (Scott Shepherd's a face I vaguely recognized—First Cow, Wormwood, El Camino—and now a name that I'll remember), that relationship's resolution, or lack thereof, raises questions that have no apparent relevance to what Slow Machine's ostensibly about. Final scene's pretty great in a vacuum, but as its import registered, my mind kept drifting back to the realtor, trying in vain to work out how her paranoia-inducing mien fits into Felten's vision. (Felten wrote the screenplay; Denardo, who's also the DP and co-edited, looks like the formal/tech half of this duo, and I was unimpressed by his looming handheld style.) Scrambled chronology creates productive initial uncertainty about who this woman is, then becomes an affectation. Always happy to see/hear Eleanor Friedberger but Stephanie hiding out with a band recording its new album is more agreeably random than inspired. Sevigny's quasi-monologue, while thematically crucial, nonetheless has a slightly stunt-y feel (maybe because they use her real name and she's in only that one thesis statement of a scene). Have you seen Suture, by any chance? This is what I think of as a Suture-type film, by which I mean that I didn't especially like Suture but nearly 30 years later I've just put McGehee's & Siegel's latest effort on my TIFF shortlist. These guys, too, have now got my attention, possibly for a long time to come.