Frameup

that's the movie that "Natural Born Killers" wanted to be, without any success. probably 1/100 from the Oliver Stone budget, and so much better, so much REAL, so muck authentic... that movie is not for everyone's eyes, it has a very slow and disturbing mood, with admirable, obscure - camera shots and no-budget video art techniques. the story of one outlaw that just got out of state prison called Rickey-Lee, and his -hard to believe- naive, girlfriend Bath-Ann. he is the almost perfect anti hero, a white trash smart guy, with anger and desperation. she's a no-life waitress, having her "good times" in remembering her high school years. they both ride to the American dream - California. a journey filled with heart-holding moments, hatred and evilness. frame up is one movie that i'll never forget. that's not the stuff that you see, go to sleep, and forget in the morning, this will stay and hopefully will make you laugh or disturbed...

The movie opens with beautiful landscape shots of the Northwest countryside. Fenceposts jutting out from soddy earth, a freight train crossing fields of hay in the distance, billows of clouds, small structures by the side of the road, a motel or a diner in the middle of nowhere. Over this plays a languid but mysterious Twin Peaks piano arrangement and it's all adequately moody and atmospheric in an American Gothic sort of way. Through this however director Jon Jost keeps interleaving awkward frames, blocks of letters, opening credits with annoying swooshing sounds, color frames that announce "BLUE", numbers that count towards the "12 Steps to a Conclusion" announced in the opening credits. It's obvious by the first couple of minutes that, though Jost is more than capable to capture landscape and ambiance, he doesn't care for it. He has neither the affection for Pacific Northwest open expanses that Terrence Malick does in Badlands and neither the time or inclination of Twin Peaks David Lynch to weave mystery and intrigue around a given location.

The rest of the movie is more Jon Jost frustration with experimental tricks that serve their own purpose. The use of split screen is interesting, I like in particular how we get the first image of Ricky Lee split in two, one is recounting childhood memories that matter only to him, the other is cursing and banging his head against the wall, and over the course of the movie the second Ricky Lee prevails, the macho laid-back hipster with the shades who is hopelessly self-involved and stupid. On the other hand the stop motion animation and choice to play most of the movie in voice-over narration does not work. It does at times because Jost writes as good as he shoots static shots of the smalltown American Nowheresville but Beth Ann's monologues, delivered in the most flat nasal monotone imaginable, a voice that sounds like Stephen Hawking's computer speech program crossed with a horse whinnying, are so grating to the ear it kind of defeats the purpose of trying to pay attention.

Each of the couple relate to us their past experiences, their small triumphs and follies and doubts and past relationships that went nowhere. They say very little to each other and what they say they say with blank faces. But they hump like rabbits. That seems to be their only channel of communication left open, perhaps the only one they can trust with any safety. Jost clearly picks his main characters in Frameup among the naive and delusional, those baited by an American Dream turned sour, but he doesn't place himself above them. He's not condescending or smug in his portrayal. They may be misguided but they are graced with moments of humanity, awkward though they may be. We're called to empathize and show affection rather than point and laugh. This is the most successful Frameup becomes; the movie's characters come alive even when their expressionless faces do not, even when Jost gets in their way with his stilted framing and obtrusive camera games.

Then we go back to angry rants about the destructive effects of money played over an inserted shot of a dollar bill, we get a weird psychedelic sequence where Jost's camera glides under big leafy trees that soon turn beetroot red as Beth Ann repeatedly muses about the "redwood trees" in the voice-over, we even get a sudden about-turn towards plot and genre as the couple of Beth Ann and Ricky Lee, smalltown losers with nowhere to go and nothing to hold them back to their dead end lives, arrive in California and decide to rob a 7/11. The movie doesn't soar to an emotional crescendo in the aftermath of the botched 7/11 job such as one might expect from a 'couple-on-the-run' road movie, it slowly screeches to a halt and you look out the window to see it hasn't really got anyplace in particular. Parts of the ride have been hypnotic and parts almost touching and funny, but everything else has been mostly annoying.

I really enjoyed watching this film. The story deals with a couple on the road who try to grasp at the mythical American Dream. The film walks the line between being hilarious and moving, and I was left with an odd feeling at the end of the film. At first I found the acting strange, but I began to see what the actors were doing, and they were doing it very well. The performances are very engaging, and they are skillfully subtle. The film has a cast of 3 speaking roles and you can tell by the techniques employed that this is a true independent film. Like other indies such as Tarkovski and Jarmusch, Jost (who does just about everything behind the camera), is a fan of the long take. Several of the shots in this film are static and you're forced to stare at an image for a long time compared to most Hollywood films. This is not to say that the film is boring, because it's exactly the opposite. The dead-pan dialogue is delivered in such a way that you're caught of guard by some of the creative lines in the film. "What? What did he just say? Atomic what?" As well as using long static shots, Jost also uses stop motion animation in conjunction with live action, and split screens abound in the film. Even if you don't love this film, at least you'll come away from it having seen something new. This film is inspiring to anyone who is tired of the usual slop that Hollywood tries to force upon us every year. It's ironic that the films that are the most creative are often the most hard to find. If you can get your hands on this film, by all means do so.

This is a great film - almost one of the many that I would like to have made (if i was a director and not a coward...). I had my leg broken in 2000 and was having very irregular sleep cycles. Waking up at 3 o'clock late night, this had been going on TV for 25-30 min. I was stricken by the the first moment and rose up with difficulty to find an empty tape to record it and so i only have half of it. It's amazing how rich can a film like that be - i used to throw sound bits of it over my DJ-sets and radio shows and always someone would ask me about it... I wish i could find it and see it in whole - HELP ME, film-freaks of the planet!!!