Skip to main content
Close

Green: 2011 AFI Film Fest

By Ryan Mason · November 7, 2011

Green is what you’d come to expect from a film festival: extremely low budget, no-name actors, and minimalist plot. While writer/director Sophia Takal offers glimpses into an interesting world in rural America, the film spends too much of its runtime without any momentum, which is one of the common pitfalls of having a passive protagonist. Kate Lyn Sheil does a solid job as her character Genevieve finally devolves into an emotional mess, but up until that point, her passivity comes across far too often as lifeless, leaving the audience with not a whole lot to work with given this character drama doesn’t have much of a plot. It’s hard to empathize for someone who rarely expresses much more than a blank stare, even if Sheil’s gaze seems to have something more bubbling up underneath, which gets confirmed later in the film, she and Takal seem to confuse understated with non-existent.

This is a film by graduate students for graduate students. When the opening scene drops us in the middle of a conversation amongst friends discussing the merits of Proust versus some other writer whom Sebastian finds superior, you know the target audience is educated, upper-middle-class academics. Proust may come up in many conversations for those within the realm of higher education, for the rest of us, it comes across pompous. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the scene immediately following the opening involved Will Hunting completely owning Sebastian in a battle of book-smarts. Needless to say, having a blank slate and a pretentious lit expert as the two main characters makes for a tough sell to anyone not living in that world.

But, I will give it this: the pretension manages to seep into everything in the film so much so that it almost seems intentional, if that were possible. Which I don’t think was the case. The minimal plot involves vegetarians Sebastian and Genevieve (two names that just scream old money Upper Manhattanites) moving to the country for a year where Sebastian practices sustainable living through light farming in order to write for a blog. Moments after they arrive, they’re greeted by their yokel neighbor, Robin, who is cute in a down-home kind of way and completely different from their New York, well-to-do selves, as evidenced by when Robin offers Genevieve a couple tabloid rags to read while Genevieve reads something you’d probably find on an Advanced French Literature 445 course syllabus. Or in another scene when Sebastian and Genevieve are laughing in bed about how he had had a conversation with Robin earlier about how she thought Tim Burton’s Batman was a piece of art, while Sebastian just agreed because how could he tell her that he thought both were terrible and that The Dark Knight was “crypto-fascist.” It’s one of those conversations that make you wonder if that’s the characters speaking or the actors trying to show off just how clever and independently minded they are in real life.

And while that feels eye-rollingly forced and snobbish, there’s actually an excellent scene later on in the film where Genevieve callously chastises Sebastian for trying to explain to Robin what an art installation is, stating that “she won’t understand” despite her sitting right there in front of them. It’s uncomfortable and we truly dislike Genevieve for being so downright disrespectful to Robin right to her face. It almost seems like Takal is aware of and criticizing her own pretension by making Genevieve the villain during this exchange, clearly the one deserving of our scorn while we pity Robin whose naïveté Genevieve confuses for stupidity.

Lawrence Michael Levine and Sophia Takal play Sebastian and Robin, respectively, and they’re actually engaged in real life, which explains their strong on-screen chemistry. It’s a smart, brave choice by Takal as a director to cast herself in the “other woman” role rather than as Genevieve despite the film being admittedly about her own raging jealousy. And considering the numerous sexually charged scenes between Sebastian and Genevieve, it seems like Takal was setting herself up for some difficult moments, emotionally, during production given her penchant for green feelings toward her lovers when other women are involved. Sheil is Takal’s real-life best friend and she captures that jealous girlfriend exceptionally well, particularly in the second half of the film when she finally begins to emote something. Her jealousy is corrosive and palpable, and it’s a testament to Takal’s craft that Green exuded such a strong emotion. It’s too bad that the pretension permeating the film prevents us from being completely lost within this world.

Takal’s debut has plenty of flaws but she creates some solid tension and atmosphere in a few scenes that show talent and potential. Perhaps exploring different worlds outside of her own bubble of academia will allow her to continue to grow, taking her from art student to bona fide filmmaker.