A married couple find themselves trapped in their frozen vehicle after a blizzard and struggle to survive amid plunging temperatures and unforeseen obstacles.
Here’s another film “inspired by true events.” Is that disclosure really necessary to imbue the proceedings with verisimilitude? Is it meant to amplify the story’s dramatic effect? Or is it merely a cheap tactic to lure the audience, consequently justifying its inherent flaws with, “well, it really happened, so…”?
Brendan Walsh’s “Centigrade” follows in the footsteps of Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” and Rodrigo Cortés’ “Buried” by setting its entire plot in one claustrophobic location: this time, it’s a car, trapped under the frozen blanket of a blizzard. Little to no care is given to developing its central duo. Walsh and his co-writer Daley Nixon subject their audience to watching a cardboard couple gradually wither away. But hey, it’s based on a true story, so….
American writer Naomi (Genesis Rodriguez) and her husband Matt (Vincent Piazza) travel to Norway on a small book tour. Before they know it, they find themselves in quite the predicament. The car is dead. The snow and ice has covered them entirely, the sun barely visible through the thick crystallized layers.
Things get more complicated. Naomi is pregnant, very close to giving birth (which makes one wonder what the hell she’s doing book-touring in Norway in the first place). They’re out of food, they spill the water, pee in a towel, write a letter (“for when we’re discovered”) — and the entire time, the storm rages on. The second half amps up the levels of ridiculousness to the nth degree.
In a limited setting such as this one, every shot counts, every line of dialogue resonates, every minute needs to be carefully modulated. Why should we care for these people? Walsh reveals next to nothing about their relationship, their background; there’s surprisingly little nuance, Rodriguez and Piazza vacillating between “shrill” and “caring.” I have no issues with minimalist fair, but then its artistic merits have to make up for the lack of fleshed-out characters, and “Centigrade,” aside from a few pretty/despondent shots of snow-encrusted vistas, contains little that would qualify as “art.”
To Walsh’s credit, I don’t think “art” was his intention. His goal must have been to piece together a lean, mean little survival thriller, and as such, it sporadically works, building a semblance of tension here and there. It never truly bores — which, considering its one-car setting, I guess can be counted as a positive.
Questions do arise: why don’t they use the head-rest to smash through the ice (seems to work fine, before Naomi sets it back, and Matt resorts to using a pocket knife)? It’s never fully clear whether Matt thinks it’s safer for them to stay inside or escape. Also, why not start by trying to smash the window at the top, where the sun’s sheen warms the ice?
“Centigrade” would have perhaps worked better as a short. Its final moments feel unearned because we just spent 80 minutes with two selfish, screechy people. The real event by which it was inspired must have been horrific; that said, converting this into a memorable, soul-shredding, unbearably intense thriller would be almost as difficult as converting Centigrade into Fahrenheit.
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