A few weeks ago I received a request to review a short film that acts as a teaser for a fea­ture film called Sex, Love & Z-​Parts. I received the screener last week, along with com­pre­hen­sive sup­ple­men­tal mate­ri­als and have also traded a few emails with Mar­cus D. Rus­sell, the dri­ving force behind the pro­duc­tion. So here’s the review:

Sex, Love & Z-​Parts imme­di­ately recalls Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Video­tape, but since I’ve not seen that film, I can’t speak to any other par­al­lels. This is likely for the best, since I know of few things that inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers hate more than being accused of deriv­a­tive style. The first thing you notice about this film is the qual­ity of the pro­duc­tion val­ues. The film­mak­ers are only ama­teur in the sense that no stu­dio is pay­ing them to do the work. It is obvi­ous that each aspect of the pro­duc­tion was cho­sen care­fully, from the film stock to the pac­ing of the action. This care has enabled the film­mak­ers to pro­vide a space in which the story can be told through mul­ti­ple subjectivities.

The style and con­tent is informed by a care­ful ren­der­ing and expo­si­tion of Gen­er­a­tion X traits, enu­mer­ated in the the­sis that was part of the sup­ple­men­tary materials:

The films of Gen­er­a­tion X have the fol­low­ing characteristics:

1) Con­spic­u­ous absence of parental figures…

2) Long­ing for the icono­graphic male bravado com­mon­place in the cin­ema that pre­ceded it…

3) The ever-​present sense of failure…

4) The issue of man­hood. How would a man act?…

5) An inabil­ity to mold into the Amer­i­can framework…

6) The rela­tion­ship problem…

This man­i­festo was informed by Dogme 95, but Big Hit’s ideas focus on more exis­ten­tial themes than cin­e­matic require­ments. It is pos­si­ble to see glimpses of this in the short­ened fea­ture I was sent, and while it will take the full film to flesh out and prove whether or not Mar­cus and his crew have been accu­rate as well as pre­cise in their tar­get­ing, they are cer­tainly doing more with this film than most other independents.

From an email:

Scott and I didn’t think we could really get out point across with­out extremely high pro­duc­tion val­ues. They are so used to grainy dig­i­tal images that they fall in love with the prettiness.…that gives us an edge and a level of trust that is tough to cre­ate in indie film. We really try to emu­late some of the pop­u­lar looks/​setups of film and TV..and then invert the meaning.

This is an inter­est­ing film because you are really not sup­posed to do this kind of shit on the short film cir­cuit. The expec­ta­tion is that you are an amateur…so you can imag­ine that they aren’t exactly happy that two loud mouth guys from LA…are puttin’ it down in the frame.

Per­son­ally, com­ing from some­one born at the ass-​end of the Gen X curve, they seem to have the bag­gage behind the label under their thumbs. The pro­longed ado­les­cent estrange­ment from the baby boomer world­view and simul­ta­ne­ous implanted desire to live up to it, the strug­gle for agency, authen­tic­ity and loy­alty in spite of it all resound strongly in SLZP. The mis­sion of Gen X, to me, seems to be the process of defin­ing what it means to be an adult in a life that has had a dis­tinct lack of them. Thanks in part to their choice of film stock [“East­man Kodak 7278 (500 Tung­sten bal­ance) for the inte­ri­ors and the night shoots… East­man Kodak 7274 (200 Tung­sten bal­ance) for the ext/​day stuff”] the film almost feels like it was shot in the early 80s, seems to say “this is how we would have done things [includ­ing make movies] if we were adults when we were chil­dren. They might not be the best choices, but we’ll roll with it and accept the world for what it is.” And if that isn’t Gen X, I don’t know what is.

I shut­tled the screener off to Tremont Inde­pen­dent, maybe it’ll show at their Decem­ber screening.