Katharine O'Brien's debut feature film, "Lost Transmissions," opens with a singalong, a scene of shared musical revelry among friends that's all too rare these days. When Theo (Simon Pegg), a popular and charming music producer, summons quiet wallflower Hannah (Juno Temple) to the piano and requests she share a song, her choice, Daniel Johnston's "True Love Will Find You In the End," is an instant bonding moment. But it's also a haunting harbinger of what's to come in this mental illness drama set in the Los Angeles music world.
Cult musician Johnston had his troubles with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder depicted in the 2005 documentary "The Devil and Daniel Johnston," directed by Jeff Feuerzeig, and his most popular and poignant song is an apt reference for "Lost Transmissions." The film follows the troubled friendship between Hannah and Theo, as Hannah's songwriting career takes off, thanks to her new friend and mentor, and Theo's mental health deteriorates in the wake of his refusal to medicate his schizophrenia.
Hannah, who struggles with her own mental illness issues, turns out to be Theo's last lifeline, after he's burned every other bridge in his LA community. While he spins out of control, he encourages her to ditch her meds to fire up her creativity again, to live life wildly, with moments of beauty and connection, but with the requisite rock bottom cratering too. Theo's terrifying and rapid mental decline is a reminder of what exactly those meds stave off, and yet Hannah can't help but want to join his wavelength, as scary and chaotic as it is.
Inspired in large part by personal experiences with a friend, O'Brien's script isn't exactly subtle or nuanced. Theo runs rampant through an overloaded and apathetic mental health system, dragging Hannah along with him, as she struggles with her own downward spiral. Without two such compelling actors as Temple and Pegg, this gritty glance into the heart of darkness of untreated mental illness could tend toward the cartoonish and ostentatious, and there are moments that are rather over the top. A desaturated color palate and handheld photography are stylized, yet grounded aesthetic choices that place the film in a kind of uncanny unreality, quite like Theo and Hannah's headspace.
He's "so charming," Hannah bemoans, as Theo hoodwinks yet another doctor. Charm is his superpower, and her kryptonite, as she falls deeper and deeper into Theo's rabbit hole of frequencies and radio waves and princesses of time, pouring more and more of herself into someone who can never be filled up by anyone else. Once the audience realizes, far before Hannah does, that Theo is a manipulative and selfish man, it's honestly a slog to the end. There is some true friendship love to be found in "Lost Transmissions," as misguided as it may ultimately be. Turns out the realest love is the one we find in ourselves.
