Last night, I attended a mini-premiere of sorts for local 2005 Indie Memphis Film Festival award winner Act One. I’m an enormous skeptic about new films, and I’m even more critical when people I’ve met or been acquainted with are doing those films. I went into the theater last night with high hopes and low expectations. Everything I had heard about the film from others was overwhelmingly positive. But then again, sometimes you just have to find out for yourself.
I can now safely report to you that Act One is a delightful coming-of-age romantic comedy that eschews all the rules of filmmaking by using the process of a screenwriter struggling to write his screenplay in order to tell its story. Kevin Hansen, the film’s erstwhile protagonist, has become enormously successful as a screenwriter and, some might say, equally as successful at “playing the field” in the dating game. But with Kevin’s meteoric success also comes a failure of epic proportions, one so dire as to potentially end his short-but-financially-successful career as a screenwriter. In an attempt to get out of the rut and prove his skill, Kevin begins working on a screenplay that is affected almost entirely by the events unfolding in his personal life.
The process by which Kevin eventually finishes his screenplay is filled with rocky precipices, life-changing moments, fleeting joys, and a lot of imagination. But will Kevin ever find the success that he wants, find true love, and inevitably grow up to find the personal successes that his new-found financial wherewithal cannot buy him? Without giving much of the plot away, that’s the setup for what is quite a remarkable accomplishment.
The movie’s undertone, though somewhat misogynstic, is merely part of Kevin’s development and transferrance from his childish ways to accepting the responsibilities that come with success. Allen Gardner is extremely likeable as Kevin, and one can easily chart the progression of his character/narrator from youthful indiscretion to the complexities of adult realities. Bettina Adger also does an exceptional job as the friend who changes Kevin’s life forever. The film is incredibly well-lit, the production design exceeds that of many of the independently-financed films I’ve seen, and the editing could not have been better. The music, courtesy of Will Deshazo and Landon Moore, adds texture and punctuation to the films many laughs. I don’t think I really stopped laughing for more than a few minutes at any given point in time.
As a jumping off point for a group of friends who have been making independent films in Memphis for nine years now, Act One is a breath of fresh air in the coming wave of cinema for which Memphis seems destined to be the heir apparent. The movie is only running for a week at Malco’s Studio On The Square. I suggest you take your friends or your significant other to check it out. You will not be disappointed.
