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You Wont Miss MeUS Narrative Feature FilmsU.S.A., 2009, 81 mins., color & b/w Director Ry Russo-Young creates an engrossing character portrait in this deceptively compact, but exquisitely layered, feature. Stella Schnabel portrays Shelly, the daughter of an emotionally removed mother. Shelly strives to make her own mark and find affirmation, but her life's landscape is littered with dilemmas. Setting her sights on an acting career, she attends multiple auditions, but her ferocious, emotional intensity in these settings keeps her from getting jobs. Friendships, especially with other women, become fraught arenas of blaming and posing as Shelly shores up her defenses against potential hurts, however slight. Casual encounters with men offer little hope of romance. Even her supportive best friend Simon finds it necessary to draw boundaries where Shelly is concerned. Returning regularly to a psychiatric hospital, Shelly is repeatedly counseled by the resident shrink, who tries to give her a leg up on the go-nowhere cycles of her life. Is there still time? Russo-Young renders this depiction of intersecting dead ends with an astute and exactingly measured empathy. Her searching, elliptical narrative structure and compact, concentrated mise-en-scène astutely underline the lonesome self-sabotage involved when self-reliance becomes an armor against intimacy and, particularly, when a woman's affirmation continually rests in the hands of some man (a friend, a date, a psychiatrist, or a casting director). Subtly mannered performances and an evocative score round out this knowing portrait, viewed from outside and in. CAST Stella Schnabel, Simon O’Connor, Carlen Altman, Rene Ricard, Sarah Ball,Donald Eric Cumming Ry Russo-Young - Ry Russo-Young grew up in downtown Manhattan and made her first 16mm hand-painted film in high school. At twenty-two, she was profiled in a New York Times Magazine cover story, "Growing Up with Mom and Mom." Her short Marion, a deconstruction of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, won awards for best experimental film at the 2006 South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) and the 2005 Chicago International Film Festival. Her debut feature Orphans won the 2007 SXSW Special Jury Prize and is available on DVD.
Screenings:
Fri. Jan 16 11:30 p.m. - YOUWO163L Holiday Village Cinema III, Park City Sat. Jan 17 8:30 p.m. - YOUWO17PN Prospector Square Theatre, Park City Sun. Jan 18 4:30 p.m. - YOUWO18DA Broadway Centre Cinemas IV, SLC Thu. Jan 22 12:15 p.m. - YOUWO224D Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City |
