Enlightened Pictures presents its full-length video set in San Francisco during the hottest days of Internet start ups. The personalities, in a fast-paced improvised sequence, tell their unique stories and common themes with tender attention to the subtlety and brutality of relationships. It's about making babies and money. It's about energy and lots of it. The full-dimensioned spray of relationships quickly reveals who is with whom.
The production rests on solid performances by the extensive cast including Lee Flores Tsoflias, Mark Rachel, Kerry Gudjohnson, and Matthew Gardner, each commanding attention by alluding to their delicious secrets, each providing personal support for the thematic and photographic structure of the unfolding drama. David Babich plays Dean, a wild meteor of a man arcing into close orbit around his beloved, played by Radha Lorca.
Daniel Gamburg's editing distributed the one hour and forty-three minute show rather fairly among a core cast of ten or so. The crew took chances with the shoot and it paid off in plenty of action and movement. The neighborhoods are vividly shot and perhaps more could be made of that, as if the characters of IPO, in all their specificity, were part of much larger story, in idea as well as in vision. Shot without a script, the entire movie was improvised, producing a selection wide and rich enough in choices to enable the editor to assemble a set of interleaving stories rising to climax.
If there was a flaw, it was the suddenness of the reinforcing of the impending climax by Dean in the scene in Tahoe. But then again, someone would have stepped forth to take the scene after the confession of Mathew and Kerry. And it returned Frank Torrano, as the policeman, with vengeance (and Dean his target), characterized the ending, and returned the viewer and viewed to constant change. The experiment is an exploration of autonomy as illustrated by the power and independence of personality.
The production relied on the teamwork of Barewitness. Their website features shorter work and trailers as well as contact info about the members.
Jim Strope
