Rising star Odessa Young brings just the right amount of spontaneity, youthful exuberance and charisma to keep this hyper-dimensional little ouroboros of a story about the director’s actual filmmaking experiences from feeling unbearably self-indulgent. So director Zia Anger herself deserves credit for her decent directing and casting instincts, because it all kind of works, even if it feels like a graduation project gone wrong.
Young plays Vita, a young woman who wants to make a film that is more or less about herself, though in her voiceover she continues to emphasize the differences between her real story and the fiction she creates. The “real” Vita has two mothers, a couple whom Vita conceived with the help of a gay male friend; also, Vita has had two abortions as an adult. In the film she makes, with her girlfriend Dina (Devon Ross), the character based on Vita has had only one abortion and only one mother, who has disappeared.
Working with a small, inexperienced, and often stoned crew, Vita and Dina trudge through grueling days on set, trying to film the time in Vita’s life a few years ago when she became pregnant. Filming goes poorly, with a series of near misses culminating in a drunken night so out of control that one cast member drives away, crushed, and wraps his truck around a telegraph pole. Will the film ever be finished, or will it be listed as “abandoned” like Anger’s first film (which shares the same title as the one Vita and co are shooting, Always All Ways, Anne Marie)?
There’s nothing subtle about the film’s parallels between pregnancy and artistic creation, but the slick editing and varying textures of the footage make it artful. At one point, it slams the reference to Maya Deren’s work; if you’re going to honor a great artist, you might as well make it clear and steal from one of the best. By the end, when an abortion is “performed” through the magic of mime, you can’t help but admire Anger’s guts, sly humor, and cinematography.