FILM REVIEW: LIFE AFTER BETH

Zach (Dane Dehaan) and Beth (Aubrey Plaza) in Life After Beth.

The discreet disarm of the bourgeoisie 

By John Esther

Written and directed by Jeff Baena, Life After Beth tells the comedic-tragic teenage tale of a single child named Beth Slocum (Aubrey Plaza) who went hiking one day, was bitten by a snake and died. 

(Snakes and teenage girls is always a scary combination.) 

Naturally, at first, Beth's death causes great grief in her father, Maury (John C. Reily), her mother, Geenie (Molly Shannon) and her boyfriend, Zach Orfman (Dane DeHaan). Following the funeral, Zach begins to bond with Beth's parents, especially Maury. The two play chess together, talk about what they wished they had said to Beth when she was alive and they even share some wacky tobacky. Geenie gives Zach Beth's winter scarf, which he wears around his neck like a chain in the summertime. 

The bond with Maury seems to move Zach toward recovery more than the bond Zach shares with his lightheaded parents (Paul Reiser and Cheryl Hines) and dimwitted brother, Kyle (Matthew Gray Gubler). 

When the bond between Zach and Beth's parents soon fades, Zach becomes desperate. Zach cannot understand why the Slocums will not talk to him. So Zach does some, rather creepy, snooping around the Slocum house -- looking into their windows, banging on doors, yelling, etc. The Slocums are home but nobody answers. It seems they have a secret they do not want the neighbors to discover.

As it turns out, unnaturally, Beth has risen from the grave. Hooray for Mom, Dad and Zach! Or is it a cause for celebration? This seems inexplicable. Maybe Beth is a zombie? Oh well, Zach and Beth's parents now have a second chance with their beloved. 

Zach now says all the things he wished he had said to Beth and Beth responds the way teenage boys wished teenage girls responded to such sweet talk. But, like with most teenagers, the mind and body are constantly changing. For Beth they are changing in unimaginable ways...more so than the "normal" high school girl. As Beth becomes increasingly sweet, then aggressive (primarily with jealousy), Zach begins wondering if life would be better off if Beth were dead. The ideal girlfriend has become the psychotic bitc- ah, er, girlfriend.

To add to Zach's woes, suspicions and adolescent angst, it seems Beth is not the only one rising from the dead. Others around town have risen from the grave and they are hungry for some middle-class meat. 

A cheeky satire on numerous things, such as postmortem or eternal fairy tale romances, idealized teenage love, and the resilience of the bourgeoisie to overcome threats to its comforts and joys with very little awareness and effort, Baena (who co-wrote I Heart Huckabees) has a keen yet low-key observant eye and pen for suburbia. There is humor, dread, bitter love and lousy music in Baena's suburbia. Todd Solondz may have a cinematic comrade in Baena. 

(Writing of Solondz, Baena and Life After Beth, since the Slocums and Orfmans are Jewish, a look at this film through the prism of Jewish Studies may reveal another subtext to Life After Beth.)

With regard to the soundtrack used in Life After Beth, the film's metatrope that smooth jazz soothes zombies, in particular Chuck Mangione's "Feels So Good," is dead-on hilarious. Baena's potshots at the banal music of the Babbitt/Angstrom class rings true, soft and clear. Baena and music supervisor Bruce Gilbert (not the same Bruce Gilbert as the ex-member of Wire) have created one of the smartest soundtracks of the year. 

The film's one unfortunate soundtrack choice is the use of Brian Eno's politically charged, excellent song, "Needles in the Camel Eye" (which was better used in Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine) during Beth and Zach's sexual encounter in a public park. Although Eno's album, Here Come the Warm Jets, which is where "Needles in the Camel's Eye" hails from, has some sexually charged themes in it, "Needles in the Camel's Eye" could have been used elsewhere in the film to better effect. For the sex scene, if we are sticking to Eno, a more apropos choice would have been Eno's "Here He Comes," "Driving Me Backwards" or "Sky Saw."

The one other unsettling aspect of Life After Beth is the random violence of Kyle. His gunning down of two elderly people -- one alive and one undead (he kills many more offscreen) -- jolts the dark humor of the film into something far more sinister and very unfunny. Perhaps it is a musical narrative pivot to undermine, or underscore, the more dominant "smooth jazz" trope in the film?

At any rate, judging by the screening I saw with about 20 other critics, it seems I thought it was funnier than most, if not everyone else. Aye, the only thing more annoying at being at a film screening where there is just one person laughing is when you are that one person laughing. Jarring, subversive, and enjoyable, Life After Beth does not fit into easy categorization or consumption. The film will no doubt have many detractors in the mainstream press, but for those looking for something different -- a la Solondz, Robert Altman or Luis Bunuel -- Life After Beth rises above this somnambulistic summer of cinema.

FILM REVIEW: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

Eva (Tilda Swinton) in We Need to Talk About Kevin.

The damned do not cry

By Don Simpson

Adapted from Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, writer-director Lynne Ramsay’s (Morvern Callar, Ratcatcher) film is about a miserable, budding young sociopath and his oh-so-oblivious parents. Told from Eva’s (Tilda Swinton) perspective, the fluidly non-linear narrative We Need to Talk About Kevin intertwines past and present, memory and inner-most thoughts.

If we were to reconstruct the narrative in a linear fashion, We Need to Talk About Kevin would begin with Eva’s happy marriage to Franklin (John C. Reilly). But then the spawn of Satan arrives and they name him Kevin (Rock Duer). From the moment Kevin exits Eva’s womb, the baby seems to hate her with fiery fervor. As Kevin develops into a young boy (Jasper Newell), the hatred continues to boil; he will not communicate with his mother and refuses to be potty trained. As a teenager (Ezra Miller), Kevin evolves into a fully fleshed-out sociopath as we witness his dead-eyed gaze, his utter contempt for others, and his apparent lack of guilt. Eva and Franklin idly observe as the demon spawn hones his archery skills. We can sense that Eva senses that something is wrong with Kevin, but she never tries to get help; Franklin, on the other hand, is embarrassingly clueless of the monster being raised under his roof.

Everything in Ramsay’s film is overtly orchestrated for the sole purpose of showcasing just how unruly Kevin is. We see scene after scene of Kevin acting out and are left with no other assumptions than he will develop into an evil teenager. (The non-linear narrative structure solidifies Kevin’s fate by revealing relatively early on that Kevin is presently in prison.) I kept hoping that this barrage of in-your-face clues were mere red herrings -- that Kevin would not turn out so bad after all. But Ramsay approaches We Need to Talk About Kevin as a heavy-handed diatribe about the ramifications of oblivious parenting. The title says it all, Eva and Franklin need to talk about Kevin and get him some help, but they never do. We Need to Talk About Kevin is about an accident waiting to happen; when said accident occurs, all we can do is sit back, wag our index fingers and shout “I told you so!”

Some people should just never have children — Eva and Franklin are caricatures of well-intentioned people who are just that, people who never should have had children. But then that line is a little bit blurry because their second child, Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich), seems like a perfectly sweet kid. The presence of Celia seems to suggest that the fault is not that of the parents, but that Kevin was born bad. Regardless, Eva and Franklin are totally responsible for not dealing with Kevin’s psychosis before he goes postal.

To date, there has not been a Tilda Swinton performance that has not sent near-crippling shivers down my spine.If any female actor of her generation can personify cold and creepy, it is her — and Swinton’s rapturous performance as Eva is no different. It might have been interesting to have someone in the role of Eva acting against their “type,” but I am certain that no one could have replicated Swinton’s performance. Also, all three Kevin’s are perfectly cast. Duer, Newell and Miller all look and act remarkably similar, lending the role of Kevin an uncanny sense of continuity over this 16-year timeline. (Another note of obvious casting decisions: Miller’s take on Kevin is remarkably similar to his dark and brooding portrayal of Elliot in Another Happy Day.)