SF IndieFest: Twitch
When we sat down to review our preview screener of Bay Area native and young filmmaker Leah Meyerhoff's Twitch, somehow we didn't realize it was a short, not even when the DVD itself seemed to indicate that it was only ten minutes long. We made up for our lack of paying attention by watching the film four times, to make sure we could review it thoroughly for you before you see it at the SF Indie Fest.
Twitch is a vignette about an unnamed teenaged girl (none of the characters has a name) whose mother has multiple sclerosis. The daughter (Emma Galvin in the film's strongest performance) pities her mother (Toni Meyerhoff), taking care of her more out of duty than out of love. The girl, irrationally worried about catching MS through contact, scrubs herself after each encounter with her mother and has apparently visited a gynecologist several times to make sure she's actually not sick. She escapes to her boyfriend (Peter Corrie), who's far less interested in her hypochondria than he is in getting laid.
Frankly, we're conflicted: there are a number of things we like about the film, but we don't love it. The film begins with a poignant scene from the distant past, a moment at a community pool in which the daughter longs for attention from her mother. It's beautiful, particularly the underwater shots, which sound as lyrical as they look. The mother's head is cropped out of frame, first in her wheelchair, then simply bobbing in the pool with arm floats as the daughter swims around her. It's a powerful series of deliberately framed shots that dehumanize the mother, making her into simply a dysfunctional body.
But the opening scene sets up an expectation that isn't met for the rest of the film, which is shot well (on super 16mm) and sounds fine, but after a confident beginning just looks standard.
And then there's the story itself. We feel like we knew too much going into the film, so we're having a difficult time separating the film from the extra pieces of information that we know about it. We suspect that that's the main problem the writer/editor/director, Leah Meyerhoff, faced in making the movie.
SPOILER ALERT
The movie is an apology from Leah Meyerhoff to her mother, Toni Meyerhoff, who actually has MS and portrays the mother in the film, which is based on the younger Meyerhoff's teenaged anger toward and resentment of her mother's illness. This is the problem: since we know the movie is an apology, we see the unsympathetic actions of the daughter as somewhat redeemed in the future. The movie itself, however, just shows a self-centered, scared girl looking in vain for the wrong things from the people in her life: she seeks physical affection from her mother, who can only offer emotional connection; she wants her boyfriend to listen to her and validate her feelings and fears, but all he wants is sex.
The end is something of a return thematically to the beginning, which we won't spoil here. It gives a glimmer of the transformation that we already know has occurred in the intervening years between the time of the film and present day. Most of all, the final scene leaves us wishing more of the film had that kind of original a vision.
We definitely think it's a film you should see, and judging by the armloads of awards it's received, you may love it more than we did. Shame, though, that you'll only get to see it once through -- it rewards multiple viewings.
Twitch plays the SF Indie Fest February 3 at 4:30pm at the Women's Building, February 4 at 4pm at the SF Apple Store, and February 6 at 7pm at The Roxie.