FILM
Misfired Dysfunctional Family Fare
Lesbian, sister’s scraps with Dad, Mom forced, not macap
BY GARY M. KRAMER
Rachel (Hannah Pearl Utt),
a lesbian who is the stage
manager of her father’s
theater in the Village,
has a life right out of a situation
comedy. Her date with Celia (Ayden
Mayeri) ends abruptly because she
needs to care for her wacky family.
Her father Mel (Mandy Patinkin) is
a once-famous actor/ playwright
and her older sister Jackie (cowriter
Jen Tullock) is fl ighty, impulsive,
and irresponsible. Jackie’s
pre-teen daughter Dodge (Oona
Yaffe) has plans to see Peter (Alec
Baldwin), a therapist, for some
personal issues.
In fact, the characters in “Before
You Know It” are not in a situation
comedy, but rather a frustration
comedy. This fi lm, co-written and
directed by Utt, never lives up to
its potential. Few of the jokes land,
Safety in Numbness
Solitary truck driver embodies ‘90s Serbia-Kosovo tragedy
BY STEVE ERICKSON
Serbian director Ognjen
Glavonic’s “The Load”
constantly gets compared
to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s
classic “The Wages of Fear”
and William Friedkin’s remake
“Sorcerer.” But unlike those movies,
it’s not concerned with action.
It prioritizes mood instead.
Indeed, it might be closer to Theo
Angelopolous’ slow cinema road
movies.
Set during the 1999 NATO
bombing of Serbia, it incorporates
the effects of almost a decade of
war into its look and feel. One of
those effects is a desire for safety,
which results in truck driver Vlada
(Leon Lucev) isolating himself.
Bombs fall in the distance as he
drives, but we never see them. Instead,
the anxiety caused by violence
permeates the fi lm.
Hannah Pearl Utt and Jen Tullock in Utt’s “Before You Know It.”
and it comes alive only in its big
dramatic moments.
Utt engages viewers at fi rst with
GRASSHOPPER FILM
Leon Lucev in Ognjen Glavonic’s “The Load,”
which opens August 30 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe
Film Center at Lincoln Center.
Starting out in Kosovo, “The
Load” begins with a group of men
inside a truck. Vlada and the others
get out and are each assigned
a truck to drive to Belgrade. The
1091 MEDIA
a roving camera that follows Rachel
and Celia down a street and
then Rachel into her rabbit warren
trucks are sealed, so the men don’t
know what their cargo is. (In fact,
the fi lm never explicitly reveals
what he’s carrying. Glavonic’s documentary
“Depth Two” fi lls in the
real-life historical background of
this period.) One starts to wonder
about that when Vlada is stopped
by the police and produces a paper
that lets him pass by without
the need for them to inspect the
hold. The rest of the trip is fairly
drama-free. Vlada gives a ride to
Paja (Pavle Cemerikic), a teenage
hitchhiker who plays in a punk
band and wants to emigrate to
Germany. Vlada stops from time to
time, but nothing much happens,
although details like children
spraying a wall with lighter fl uid to
set it on fi re say something about
the country’s state of mind.
Where “The Wages of Fear”
and “Sorcerer” went for elaborate,
anxiety-inducing set pieces, “The
of a home, which sits above the
family’s theater. Her family’s life is
clearly a mess, and Rachel is the
sensible and sympathetic one.
The fi lm never quite generates
real laughs. Mel embarrasses himself
at a function and Rachel justly
lashes out at him. His response is
to die unexpectedly. Rachel’s grief
is barely addressed, and the story
instead veers into a twist that Mel’s
property is actually deeded to Rachel
and Jackie’s mother Sherrell
(Judith Light), who the daughters
had long believed was dead but is
in fact a successful soap opera actress.
So, in Lucy and Ethel style,
the sisters scam their way onto the
set of Sherrell’s soap, “Time Will
Tell.” Several unfunny scenes in
which one or both of the two are
mistaken for actresses lead to a
confrontation between mother and
➤ BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, continued on p.29
Load” preserves the jitters without
their thrills. It’s more interested
in conveying the ennui of a life
on the road. Glavonic strips this
narrative down to its essentials.
While he shows off some virtuoso
camerawork near the end, much
of “The Load” simply shoots Vlada
from the seat next to him. Tatjana
Krstevski’s cinematography is so
muted and monochrome — brown
is its dominant tone — that it may
as well be black-and-white. The
color seems to have bled out of late
‘90s Serbia. Lucev’s performance
is similarly stripped-down; he never
bonds with his passenger, and
when he leaves the truck the camera
too gets out and takes notice of
other people for a few minutes.
“The Load” is very successful as
a mood piece, but it’s aiming for
something more. Americans have
➤ THE LOAD, continued on p.29
August 29 - September 11, 28 2019 | GayCityNews.com
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