Post by StevePulaski on Dec 14, 2016 13:55:44 GMT -5
The Dust Storm (2016)
Directed by: Anthony Baldino and Ryan Lacen
Directed by: Anthony Baldino and Ryan Lacen
Kristen Gutoskie and Colin O'Donoghue.
Rating: ★★★
In some ways, Anthony Baldino and Ryan Lacen's The Dust Storm is a meditation on millennials in the most basic sense. This is the generation who has a long-term relationship with someone, breaks up before "ghosting" them for a lengthy amount of time, finds them again either by pure accident or choice, has sex to relieve the stress, and then is left with the questions, feelings, and guilt all over again the next morning. Not to mention, there are plenty of beers and cocktails to go around to service a month's worth of hangovers.
Of course I'm generalizing here, but there are glimmers of that vicious cycle in The Dust Storm. The kind where one person bears the emotional weight of the relationship while the other can brush his or her hands clean and go out and enjoy themselves the next night without a guilty conscious. It features two tender and alert performances by young actors Colin O'Donoghue and Kristen Gutoskie (The Vampire Diaries) and bears a low-key style that compliments its offensive presentation. It's not too obsessed with its own culture that it's impenetrably bleak like in I Am Not a Hipster or Not Fade Away, but at the same time, lacks the kind of industry-commentary and emotional potency of something like, I don't know, Inside Llewyn Davis.
As you can maybe tell, music is an integral part of this film, largely due to its focus on Brennan (Colin O'Donoghue), a struggling musician currently slumming in Nashville on a business trip for a large company. He spends most of his days at dive-bars and talking to his boss (Jim O'Heir) about potential options down the line until he reunites with Nora (Kristen Gutoskie), the woman who broke his heart several years back. When the two sit down for a drink, we see his eyes slowly fixate on her, as he's reminded once again of everything that he fell in love with when he was younger and more spontaneous - more willing to follow his dreams even.
But as time marches on once again, he's reminded of all she did to destroy. Nora is still a freer, more sexually spontaneous soul than Brennan is, and he's willing to put that out of his mind in hopes that she could be loyal to him once again. She's in Nashville for a getaway with her current boyfriend, but her life is thrown for a loop when the two are seen fighting outside of their hotel and she decides that it was the final straw with him. Stuck in a sleepless city, with nothing pressing to do and no obligations to meet, both her and Brennan embark on a romp that makes them feel like the many years between their former relationship and now never existed.
There's a "meet-cute" element here that's hard to shake, but being the whole film looks as if it was photographed in the low-lit, sandy-colored hues of barlights, the atmosphere is decidedly muted, or at the very least, toned down enough to where we can focus on the characters and not their quirks. This kind of film wouldn't be complete, however, without scenes of both Brennan and Nora burning cigarettes into their arms so they can each have a scar to "remember the night" or Nora standing on a stage in a local park belting out a song while Brenna plays an imaginary ukulele.
These moments can be overshadowed and mostly forgiven by how much writer Ryan Lacen focuses The Dust Storm on the idea of how relationships can rekindle themselves, even beyond human participation. This is very much a film where feelings take over logic, and impulsiveness replaces the urge to stop and think. When Brennan and Nora reconnect, we get the idea that it's their emotions and feelings taking control of their actions rather than themselves, and that's the beautiful thing about a romance film like this. When you have two talented actors, with small filmographies and little personal life distractions to dilute the power of their on-screen performances, you end up with a clean-slate and often have a fairly effective result.
Little, if anything, in The Dust Storm treads new waters, and when the ninety minutes comes to a close, there's a part of us that is thankful it didn't go on like so many films do, for another twenty to twenty-five minutes, injecting a lot of bloated fluff into what is clearly a simple story. There's not much that will blow you away here, but there's enough to satisfy you until the conclusion, and when you're watching a young couple fall in and out of love just to fall in it again, that's can sometimes make a passive observer content.
Starring: Colin O'Donoghue, Kristen Gutoskie, and Jim O'Heir. Directed by: Anthony Baldino and Ryan Lacen.