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Movie Review: Make Room for Room
*This review comes from new Austinist contributor Rebecca Reed*
With its grace notes of post-911 disillusionment, Kyle Henry’s Room screened to an enthusiastic hometown crowd at The Alamo on South Lamar, kicking off its local theatrical run.
Julia Barker is a wife, mother, bingo parlor matron and telephone book delivery person who is hitting the proverbial wall. Or maybe four of them. Episodes of excruciating head pain provide her glimpses of a place that beckons her away from her home and family in Houston, Texas, and on to New York City in a quest for relief from the difficulties of life.
Arriving late to work again, her coworker’s T-shirt declares in the dairy council’s moniker, “got pain?” Played underdog-heroic by actress Cyndi Williams, the relentless static in Julia’s life clears only long enough to get a glimpse of just how bad things really are and how deeply intertwined she is. Wrought with symbolism of 911 and its aftermath, one part Wizard of Oz, and another part of what we all see nightly on the news, Room follows a doe-eyed, cupie doll-lipped innocent as she tries to navigate her way to making sense of it all. While the Room symbolizes a safe haven to Julia, her journey to The Big Apple provides her with glimpses of people along the way who seem to be just as lost as she is—they just don’t seem to notice.
Departing from the usual three-act structure, director Kyle Henry says his film has two distinct parts, the division occurring when his heroine suffers a blackout and wrecks her car. Instead of a first act required to get to know Julia and her plight, we already know Julia as a symbol of modern life in America. Rather we see Julia’s insurmountable problems pre-wreck and we see Julia’s self-sacrificing search post-wreck.
This film scores high marks in its acting and visuals. Digital cinematographer, PJ Raval shot on the DVX-100 with celluloid transfers for projection. The visual style, in both shooting and editing, favors a voyeuristic, bordering-on-cinema verite snapshot into the lives of the people who populate the story. Intimate framing, quick cuts, fragmented sequences and handheld camera all add to the overall tone, themes and personal feel of the film.
Electronic soundtrack music by The Lysergic Dream, The Crack Pipes and Ioscil is hypnotic and penetrating, with a downbeat that creates what Henry calls “a waking dream.”
Room has not gone unnoticed by the cinemaphiles around the world. A 2005 premiere at Sundance, 2006 international premiere for the Directors Fortnight at Cannes, and Independent Spirit award nominations for Williams as Best Actress and Henry for the John Cassavetes Award make Room a must see for every Austin film fanatic.
Image (c) Matt Wright.
