[yasr_overall_rating]
Ryan struggles to find meaning in his provisional existence, exploring sex and death and the idea of ‘becoming something.’
The tagline for “Lily in the Grinder” states that the film is “the closest I’ve seen film come to dreaming.” It is indeed a good tagline but the issue I have with it, is that we all dream differently. For as long as I can remember, I dream as if I am watching a film and it probably has to do with the fact that I’ve been making movies since I was 12 years old and even though I’m in the dream, it plays out as if I were watching it unfold on a TV screen. “Lily in the Grinder” falls into the cliché of what a lot of people perceive dreams to be and that is disjointed and unintelligible. I’ve never once had a dream like that, my dreams play out as I stated earlier, like coherent stories but again, that’s personal conjecture.
The story centers on Ryan (David A. Gregory), an unemployed young man who shares an apartment with two roommates, Bean (Dan Amboyer) and Nik (Kesav Wable). Both of them have jobs and while Ryan searches the internet daily for employment, his mind wanders to anything and everything that is anywhere but in the present. While Nik is constantly on his case about finding work, Bean understands his situation and constantly reassures him that the perfect job will come along and that he just needs to apply himself some more. One day, Ryan receives a phone call from Nik informing him that Bean was in a car accident and dies as a result.
While attending the funeral, once more, Ryan’s mind begins to wander to faraway perspectives instead of concentrating on the here and now. The film is beautifully shot by Judy Phu and while there are certainly some capricious and imaginative images, it never really amounts to anything, emotionally. What traces of a story that were evident early on, only seem to have been placed there to keep some sort of cognitive thread running throughout the movie in order to keep us involved while we observe some fantastical and aesthetic visuals. This movie is one of the finalists in Matt Damon’s and Ben Affleck’s ‘Project Greenlight’ competition on HBO and I wish the filmmakers the best of luck.
