[yasr_overall_rating]
Plagued with guilt and a burning desire to escape his unhappy relationship, amateur filmmaker Adam seeks support from his father (Robert Wagner), therapist (Alexia Landeau), and attorney (Marshall Bell) without success. Not until he meets Diamond (Roxy Saint), his rockstar muse, is Adam able to find asylum in the City of Angels.
“39” – written by, produced by, and starring Josh Evans – checks off so many boxes on the “arthouse film stereotype” that there were several instances where I honestly wondered if I was watching a satirical production that was drily mocking avant-garde cinema. As fun as that would have been, I was unfortunately forced to conclude that no, I was watching a film that was trying too hard to be progressive. As anyone who sat at the top of a high school social hierarchy can attest, you can’t try to be cool, and it is easy to spot those who think they can. “39” is guilty on that front, as it is on many others that ultimately detract from a piece whose production value is high and whose cast is clearly talented.
“39” tells the story of Adam (Josh Evans), a Los Angeles-based amateur filmmaker currently undergoing a messy divorce. The title is indicative of the subject’s age. Adam is clearly not handling his transition to middle age with any sort of grace. He goes days without sleeping and lashes out at his friends and family as he gets sucked deeper and deeper into Hollywood’s seedy underbelly. Unfortunately, he also makes for an entirely unsympathetic protagonist, which is surprising considering that the plot involves him confronting both the difficulties of marital life and the anxiety of getting older, two problems that should be easily relatable. However, Adam is little more than a petulant man-child: selfish, cantankerous, and completely neurotic.
The protagonist’s character flaws are amplified moreover by the film’s nonlinear narrative. Obviously, nonlinear stories can work very well – Christopher Nolan’s “Memento” is an example of a that device tested to its limits and succeeding – but this is not one of those cases. It felt as if “39” was trying to be avant-garde for the sake of being avant-garde. It is one thing to make a film intentionally jarring, and then tie up the narrative in a way that ultimately makes sense. “39” did not come close to accomplishing this, and that characters’ relationships with one another were confusing and made little sense. That is not to say that the actors did a poor job – quite the contrary, I wanted to know more about the characters who they brought life to. Unfortunately, Evans the director proved to be less capable than Evans the actor, and the film is worse off for it.
There is a fine line between a picture that challenges conventional norms of filmmaking, and a picture that fails to hold water. “39” is clearly in the latter camp. One reviewer noted the similarities between “39” and student films – I found this comparison to be very apt. The glacial pacing and overwrought storytelling can easily be found in the film major at USC, Chapman, or NYU. In fact, you might find more meaningful plot arcs and more developed characters in one of those films – if you want to see the power of a student film done right, check out “The Man in the Woods” on YouTube. While “39” certainly had its redeeming qualities, I can’t recommend it to anyone who is looking for a cinematic experience that will be easy to enjoy.
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