UNDER THE SILVER LAKE
Hidden shallows…
A befuddled Andrew Garfield in an LA noir.
Even if the vote is still out on writer-director David Robert Mitchell, one thing’s sure: he knows his movies. With It Follows, he brought Lynch-grade levels of abstract intensity to a sharp-edged slasher homage. For his Cannes-dividing third feature, he flaunts the influences of noir and Hitchcock with a brazen audacity that’s almost – but never entirely – enough to compensate for some equally obvious narrative issues.
If the ingredients don’t add up, don’t blame Andrew Garfield. A rudderless Cali stoner with a toxic male’s sense of entitlement and a Hitchcockian voyeur’s eye, Garfield’s Sam magnetises even when the shaggy-dog narrative gets baggy. When Sam’s neighbour Sarah (Riley Keough) catches his eye and disappears afterwards, his investigation leads down an occult rabbit hole of dog killers, owl-faced spooks, comic-book conspiracies and more, unpicking Sam’s self-certainties en route. Which is all fine, if you don’t expect Sam’s CERTIFICATE 15 DIRECTOR David Robert Mitchell STARRING Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, Topher Grace SCREENPLAY David Robert Mitchell DISTRIBUTOR Mubi RUNNING TIME 139 mins
trail of symbolic dog biccies to lead anywhere but round in circles.
If you accept that the trail is the point, movie-wise pleasures mount. Between its film clips, deconstructed noir-dope lead, lush LA locale and plush retro score (by Disasterpeace), the film works as a Valentine to cinema. David Lynch’s influence also lingers, right down to a gratuitous head-pulping.
But Lynch’s Mulholland Drive left more to debate than Lake’s bland final revelations, and its leads blazed brighter than Mitchell’s under-written, under-dressed women. As both sum and cine-smart satire of Sam’s hipster horndog head-space, Lake boasts ambition and surface style. Yet if its inward-looking pitch fails to entice, Sam’s effusive onanism might seem its most on-point metaphor. Kevin Harley
THE VERDICT
Meta-wonder? Meta-wank? Garfield’s lead aside, Mitchell’s lush, trippy noir homage wobbles between two stools.