Here is a tiresome act of self-indulgence that looks like a gussied-up film-school piece – a flatly acted pastiche southern gothic with dabs of David Lynch and early Harmony Korine. It’s heartsinkingly comparable to Ryan Gosling’s recent directorial debut Lost River, chivvying the audience into sharing its saucer-eyed wonder at all the sun-kissed scenes of down-home poverty and authenticity.
Co-director, co-writer and star Rémy Bennett plays Pernilla, a young woman in New York, stunned by news that a childhood friend has taken her own life. Deeply troubled, she returns to her Louisiana hometown to find Patrick (Evan Louison), with whom she and the dead woman grew up together, a trio of kids, running wild in the countryside.
A dormant sexual tension between Patrick and Pernilla begins to reassert itself, and it becomes clear that the suicide is linked to a secret from their past which is coyly withheld until the film’s final minutes. Some flickery flashback memory glimpses give a clue, but these two characters wind up actually having to describe it, explicitly, for our benefit – a pretty hefty screenplay flaw. This drama never convinces or comes to life.
