I had been wanting to see this back when it was making the rounds on the festival circuit, so I'm glad to have finally gotten around to it now. It was really good to see a film set in Nashville; for the amount of stuff shot there, there's surprisingly few films (that I've seen) set there. It does capture some of the flavour of the place as I knew it as a student there, a sort of "Nashville realism."
That's one of the strengths of the film, for me. The dialogue feels like snippets out of conversations I've had with real people, and the characters like people I've actually met. The downside of that is that it's not necessarily conducive to narrative, which I think should have a bit more of the unexpected. There's an art in making the unexpected seem natural or even inevitable. Sometimes the conversations feel a bit stilted, and I found myself able to predict most of the story well in advance.
The cinematography is inconsistent, ranging from the gorgeous to the mildly annoying. On the former end of the spectrum you have some of the city and outdoor shots and a random smattering of shots of domesticity, mostly done with stationary camerawork and lovely colours. On the less positive side, a number of scenes felt like they were filmed uncomfortably close -- I was leaning back in my seat to try to get distance. I noticed this more on the front half of the film; maybe I adjusted? Generally I'm also not a fan of shaky camerawork, but that's a stylistic quibble, not related to execution.
I had no issues with the editing, which was unobtrusive: the mark of successful editing. Creative, though -- sometimes the dialogue continues even if the visual components of the scene have moved along, which I thought was a nice touch.
Overall I think this is a strong, character-focussed first effort from Bill Badi and Carter Adkins. It'll be really interesting to see where their careers go. I'll be watching along!
