Wet Behind the Ears: Alaimo’s Suburban Malaise a Standard Procedure
We’ve come to expect a certain amount of functional dysfunction to be featured in independent films depicting the decomposition of nuclear American families all tuckered out by their dogged insistence on living out the illusion of a proscribed way of existence. You can count Jay Alaimo’s latest film, Chlorine, as an overly familiar example of hitting all the customary checkmarks, including a more pressing and dramatic back story used to tie its disparate characters together.
Issues of class and how we’re conditioned to always hunt for loopholes to score upgrades seems to be an overarching theme but between a handful of moments where Alaimo is trying too hard to score pathos or convey information, the film is a stagnant, emotional plateau, managing only to ingrain us with an apathetic attitude towards its characters.
It almost...
We’ve come to expect a certain amount of functional dysfunction to be featured in independent films depicting the decomposition of nuclear American families all tuckered out by their dogged insistence on living out the illusion of a proscribed way of existence. You can count Jay Alaimo’s latest film, Chlorine, as an overly familiar example of hitting all the customary checkmarks, including a more pressing and dramatic back story used to tie its disparate characters together.
Issues of class and how we’re conditioned to always hunt for loopholes to score upgrades seems to be an overarching theme but between a handful of moments where Alaimo is trying too hard to score pathos or convey information, the film is a stagnant, emotional plateau, managing only to ingrain us with an apathetic attitude towards its characters.
It almost...
- 2/27/2014
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
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