*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Jessica Bohl, Richard Brundage
written and directed by Gorman Bechard
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Sometimes skill doesn't count for much. Coming in the next issue of iViews is a review of Mike Reilly's Road to Victory, which by most technical standards qualifies as inept but still manages to get by on a raw rage that can't possibly be faked. Its commitment to its subject matter is so complete that it (sort of) makes up for a fundamental misunderstanding of the medium. You Are Alone is an altogether different beast: it's reasonably well-shot (by DV indie standards), has a decent understanding of structure and foreshadowing, is consciously plugged into its subject matter–and through sheer force of prurience turns all of those plusses into a big minus. I have no idea what brought writer-director Gorman Bechard to the subject of a teenage prostitute and her next-door neighbour, but the end product is less compassionate than creepy and certainly less insightful than risible by the time of its wannabe-shock climax.
The first problem is that You Are Alone can't get over the fact that the teen prostitute is a teen prostitute. Having contrived Yale-bound Daphne (Jessica Bohl) into a hotel room with middle-aged neighbour Buddy (Richard Brundage), who found out about her double-life by attending his nephew's stag party, the narrative is largely her being grilled by this sheepish client; though she's there basically to insure her secret, she's full of information on her work, her clients, and her motives for hooking in the first place. Anyone who's been within hailing distance of an alternative weekly will roll their eyes as Buddy learns the difference between a GFE and a BBBJ and hears stories involving various johns ranging from tender to "gross."
Buddy tells us relatively little. It's strongly suggested that he's a widower, and he talks (glancingly) about the loneliness of his life after losing the one who mattered most. But the film–well, the camera–is fixated on Daphne and her body. This sort of makes sense for a movie dealing with prostitution, but You Are Alone isn't really interested in her as a character: her constant exegesis on her profession is there to deflect attention from the void that is Buddy, whom we learn is "lonely" through a few errant flashbacks. One imagines that Bechard has an avatar in Buddy–a man seemingly shocked by the very phenomenon that put him in the hotel room in the first place–and that he's enacting his own fantasy rather than exploring the characters and the true nature of their relationship.
Were the film straight-up Skinemax, this wouldn't be a problem. Bechard appears to believe that he's saying something profound in linking prostitution with alienation when in actuality he's just trafficking in platitudes. Compare this movie to Lizzie Borden's Working Girls, a film that maintains a casual attitude about sex work without losing sight of the people doing it or its many attendant issues and annoyances; by contrast, You Are Alone refuses or is unable to draw a picture of anything but a series of hump sessions that spew out of its female lead's mouth like "The Vagina Monologues". The film is indeed disquieting, but for all the wrong reasons: it shows an unhealthy monomania that's mainly for the benefit of the male protagonist. Bechard's limits as a scenarist and as a sociologist result in something that's neither pleasurable nor edifying and should have its audience sleeping with the lights on–fully clothed.
New Light/Vivendi's DVD presentation of the shot-in-HD You Are Alone is only so-so. The 1.81:1 anamorphic widescreen image is soft and beset by video noise in certain spots, and though colours are bright without bleedthrough, compression-type artifacts are common throughout. Accompanying Dolby 2.0 stereo audio is strictly functional, as befits the picture's microbudget origins. Extras begin with a commentary by Bechard, who starts by calling his opener (a priest exhorting Daphne to urinate on him) a great attention-grabber. Yeeesh. He goes on to discuss more the logistics of the thing than the aesthetics, though he mentions how Bohl's ad-libbing inspired him to the point of awarding her an "additional dialogue" credit; he also cites his (cliché) shot of Daphne in a cross position as "revenge for twelve years of Catholic school." Eleven wisely-excised deleted scenes (with dismal sound) include some nonsensical potty-mouthed stuff with Daphne's mother, a scene where Daphne and Buddy are brought together by her parents, inserts of past events that violate the huis clos atmosphere of the film, and an alternate ending that is very cheesy indeed. You Are Alone's long and short trailers round out the regular disc portion, while a DVD-ROM interface branches to cast and crew bios, the shooting script, and a short film by Bechard. I'd comment on that last one, but my old and funky system crashed every time I tried to access it.
84 minutes; R; 1.81:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Stereo); DVD-5; Region One; Vivendi
