I, an Actress

I, an Actress (1977)

*** (out of 4)

George Kuchar directed this ten-minute short, which has him playing himself, a director, who is giving direction to actress Barbara Lapsley. Basically for ten straight minutes we see Kuchar acting out what he wants the actress to do and then she gives her take on the screen. Kuchar is a cult filmmaker like no other but the majority of the film's I've seen from him were just confusing and downright bizarre to say the least. This film here is actually a pretty good one on a number of levels but the biggest is just getting to see the fun Kuchar appears to be having because he really gets into the role when trying to explain what he wants to see from the actress. I would also argue that Lapsley is also very good here and the two certainly work well together and that makes for a fun short.

This George Kuchar film can be found in "American Film Treasures/Avant Garde Film: Disc 2"--a compilation of mostly forgotten art films of the 20th century. This DVD set is NOT for the casual viewer and sometimes I wonder why I watched the films--as some of them were VERY artsy and weird!

Barbara Lapsley was a young actress who agreed to make this film. It consists of her doing a monologue but is unusual because the director, Kuchar, appears on the film and gives her direction. It's is very interesting as you see the creative process AND because Kuchar was really good when he acted out her parts and giving her direction (frankly, he was better than she was and I wish he'd just done the reading or acted in more of his films). It's all very unusual but a great film for up and coming actors. And, oddly, is much more watchable than most of the films on the DVD. Difficult to rate but well worth seeing.

George Kuchar, one half of the low budget filmmaking sometimes-duo the Kuchar brothers, directed this quick oddity. It's extremely short and extremely meta, it focuses on a woman acting and a man (played with much humor by George Kuchar himself)directing her. They go over the script, she rehearses her lines, he communicates to her what he really WANTS her performance to be, and by the end she mostly seems to have delivered. My description of the film doesn't at all capture what it FEELS LIKE, however, because the whole short is strangely chaotic. The audio is pretty amateurish, the camerawork is sloppy, the entire film has an atmosphere that borders on claustrophobia, the actress' shadow paints a German Expressionism-esque portrait of black on the wall behind her and it adds a slight angle of unsettling weirdness. It feels like you're really there trying to get the movie made, and I can kind of relate with this film in how it portrays the amateur movie making process. It is simultaneously very fun and very hectic. Both of these elements are portrayed quite well in this short. It's pretty funny, but it's also kind of stressful and seems to be intentionally annoying to watch.