Review of Gillian Robespierre's short film "Chunk"

Gillian Robespierre is a Brooklyn based filmmaker who, from over here on my end of the country, appears to be taking her craft for serious. Filmmaking isn't reducible to a singular craft, because there's no single skill or ability to focus on or perfect to become the competent F I L M M A K E R... It's more like a huge potluck style party thrown together by a few people, and the entire party's success depends on every dish down to weakest one. That's a bad analogy. My point is, even though I've never met Robespierre, I can tell you from my experience that she's the type of artist who is willing to roll her sleeves up and invest herself wholly in her films, because at this level, quality films with good story-lines and believable acting and setting that bring it all to life on the screen- they don't just happen.

Robespierre's film "Chunk," her thesis project at the School of Visual Arts Film & Video Program NYC, is more than just a good film with a good story line and believable acting: it's a funny movie. One that maintains a charming authenticity throughout it's 16 minutes of play. The movie follows Liz, a cynical teen who's been forced to spend the summer at a fat camp by parents who, obviously, think she's fat. She's got a bad attitude about the whole thing, but in the context of a fat camp, and by extension the type of neurotic culture that needs to send it's kids to a place called a fat camp, Liz's attitude strikes me as better than any of the alternatives. In this vein, she wanders the peripheries of the camp, getting into understated shenanigans, including letting a kitchen worker shag her, and buddying up with the camp owner's cigarette smoking outcast daughter. Realistic writing, great sound and editing, and a nice structure in the unfolding of "Chunk's" events; all kept me engaged emotionally when I needed to be.

Films like "Chunk" make a good case for amateur filmmakers to prioritize good story through writing and finding the right actors to deliver on that writing. A superior story with less-than-notable cinematography or image quality will still be accessible to audiences- the opposite isn't always going to be true. The image quality on "Chunk" reminds me of movies I used to shoot on an archaic RCA Video Camera my dad let me use when I was a kid, with those totally-certain-of-themselves video colors, but oh how the stop-motion dinosaur toys did fight. Anyways, despite the washed out, video-color look of the movie, I thought the cinematography was great. It felt natural. My favorite moments for DP Ross McDonnell were at 3:20, as Liz floats face down in the lake, doing her best to look like an overweight drownee, and at 9:28, when we see the kitchen guy's New Balances pressed together so pathetically as he bones Liz.

Robespierre has to be given credit for her knack for putting characters in the right situations so we can learn something about them, and then taking the characters a step further to find some humor in it all. Her two films on Vimeo, "Chunk" and the more recent "Obvious Child," which she co-wrote and directed, present life at those awkward moment's, when it's coming across as a bad joke. The movies' have as their premises concepts I would expect to find trite(snarky teenager in fat camp / unexpected pregnancy leads to abortion clinic first date), but turned my preconceptions around by introducing me to intelligent characters dealing realistically with some of life's many bad jokes. Robespeirre turns these bad jokes funny again, by alternating between just the right doses of harshness and sensitivity in the examination of her protagonists. For me, the films stand apart from so much other amateur movie-making because they pull off that tone- where people cope with weirdness, heaviness, or sadness, by being funny, or in Liz's case, by staying cynical. Afterall, it is pretty effing funny, isn't it? Either way, as a generation so thoroughly laden with cynics, I feel safe in recommending Robspeirre's movies because they achieve a mood many of us can identify with.

But don't take my word for it, watch them yourself.

http://vimeo.com/6459808