The Waiter

A decent first effort by ambitious director G. Allen Johnson, a fan of the French New Wave. However, attempting to emulate the loose and improvised "anything goes" styles of a Goddard or Truffaut on one's first film a is daunting task.

For instance Johnson has many scenes that are shot in one long take. Some of these scenes are wide shots with no camera movement, cutaways or closeups the entire time so, in these scenes at least, the audience never gets to see the emotions on the actors' faces. I really missed that, and I felt I had little or no connection to the film at those times.

I think that Johnson was purposely trying to convey the detachment and distance from society that the main characters experience on a day to day basis. To some extent the gambit worked, but then it went on and on to the point that the audience becomes too detached themselves to care.

While the leads William Bullock and Kate Shoup were really quite good, especially for being untrained actors, much of the supporting cast was so mediocre that they were a distraction.

Bullock as Terran really richly conveyed the emptiness of a man who simply does not understand how to connect to other humans in a normal way. Unfortunately, he was limited both by a somewhat weak and sloppy script and also by the aforementioned plodding wide shots.

I hope Johnson can go on and make other films that don't try so hard to break the rules and inject such ambitious experimental chaos. If he can rein himself in to a more basic and clear-cut film with better actors, a better, more streamlined script, and tighter editing, he should do just fine and I look forward to seeing his future efforts.