Giving Birth to a Butterfly, 2021.
Directed by Theodore Schaefer.
Starring Annie Parisse, Gus Birney, Rachel Resheff, Constance Shulman, Owen Campbell, Paul Sparks.
SYNOPSIS:
A woman who has had her identity stolen goes on a road trip with her son’s pregnant girlfriend to find those responsible.
Theodore Schaefer’s surreal debut places a flickering light on an all-American suburban place between places. Offering plenty of soul-searching dialogue and existential complexities, the result is a disarming piece that draws heavily on mid-American societal roles and expectations.
In a non-descript town somewhere in North America, we meet several characters going through various life struggles. There is the newly pregnant Marlene (Gus Birney) dealing with her tragically disappointed former actress mother (Constance Shulman – with shades of Sunset Boulevard, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and, bizarrely, TV’s Schitt’s Creek).
Marlene’s young slacker soon-to-be father Drew (Owen Campbell) who is not the biological Dad, presents his girlfriend to his parents for the first time. This goes down very well with his own father Daryl (Paul Sparks), a disgruntled short-order cook trying to get his dream of a diner off the ground.
However the news sits badly with Darryl’s wife Dianne (Annie Parisse) who is understandably worried about the family finances. She works as a pharmacist, but Darryl’s restaurant plans have left them in a precarious position money-wise.
When Dianne discovers that she has fallen prey to online scammers she enlists the help of Marlene to track down the crooks. They end up bonding during the long drive to another non-place – this time a GPS point in the middle of a slow road. The self-consciously strange images start to add up, and do not combine satisfyingly with the plot.
The film is essentially about Dianne’s frustration with her job, marriage and life in general, but the scenes highlighting this become shunted out of the way by the ‘weird’ of dimly lit interiors and more than one set of twins. The film benefits from some entertaining performances, most notably from Shulman and Birney, but really it is a feature caught between two ideas.
You kind of want the film to go full-on dream art-house and just showcase a break from reality. As it is, it feel a bit hemmed in by the sparce ideal of the plot.
When the dreamlike quality is given a chance to shine out without getting lost in the other film – the stripped down one about surviving in a run of the mill small town – there is a neat capturing of the odd.
However, the experimental feel of the film could have been approached better if whole chunks of dialogue were taken out. A more dramatic change of pace would have been more effective than the jarring philosophical chat in the car between the two leads. Nevertheless, it is an intriguing low-budget piece to see for fans of weird Americana, and it will be interesting to see what Schaefer does next.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert W. Monk
Originally published June 7, 2023. Updated June 6, 2023.
