Bellflower

Bellflower, an astonishing and uncompromising debut feature, tells a story familiar to independent cinema today--guy meets girl, they fall in love and revel in momentary bliss, then it all falls apart and our wounded protagonist wallows in self-pity as he rues the day this girl happened into his life. The situation is familiar, but what sets Bellflower apart is the intensely personal approach, both in point of view and in the presence of the filmmaker's heavy, calloused hand.

In this case the two are nearly interchangeable, as the ingenious Evan Glodell serves as the director, writer, main actor, producer, and inspiration for the story on screen. The story came about, Mr. Glodell says, roughly eight years ago when he experienced a heart-wrenching break up and found that few films existed that did justice to the internal anguish one truly feels in the weeks following a life-altering betrayal. The solution that he posits--the true remedy to sorrow glossed over by past representations--lies not in a cheery song or a change in attitude, but rather in fire, destruction, and the fulfilling fantasy of brutal, thorough revenge.

The film opens with a quote from The Road Warrior's King Humongous. "No one defies the Humongous," it reads and immediately the context for the next one hundred minutes are set. A brief montage then offers glimpses of what will come-- a box of "Milly's shit," a souped-up muscle car skidding out, and a man dreamily walking down a street, covered in blood. From there we meet Woodrow, played essentially by Glodell as himself, and Aiden, his best friend, roommate, and more boisterous counterpart. They discuss their plans for a Mad Max-inspired gang called Mother Medusa equipped with home-made flamethrowers, shotguns, and tank-like cars in the event of the apocalypse (all of which were hand made by Mr. Glodell and friends.)

Woodrow, confident enough to shoot a propane tank with a shotgun slug but too reserved to stand out at a bar, exhibits the vulnerability hiding in the shadow of the masculine, diesel-soaked world he has created. The doomed romance he enters begins at a fittingly outlandish party where he meets Milly, played by an infectiously adventurous, heavily made-up Jessie Wiseman, in a cricket eating contest. Their first official date is an impromptu road trip to West Texas which provides snippets of romantic euphoria, which will be evoked as distant memories during the eventual decline, and leaves Woodrow with a motorcycle that he trades for his whiskey-dispensing custom Volvo.

Most of the relationship is omitted and we move quickly to the somber day of Milly's inevitable betrayal. What follows is an entrancing descent into Woodrow's ultra-violent fantasy of the event's fallout. No tool of destruction is omitted in his pursuit of revenge-turned-micro apocalypse. Physical injury mirrors mental and emotional decline, which we experience firsthand as we move farther from reality and deeper into Woodrow's warped imagination. Perhaps the greatest success of Bellflower is the camera used to record it-- the customizable 'Coatwolf Model II' made by Mr. Glodell, interchangeably capable of scratched toy-camera grittiness and luscious large format grandiosity. It's hard to tell if the images, nimbly manipulated by director of photography Joel Hodge, bask in the rich evening light of Ventura or the fires of an impending apocalypse.

In the end we are asked to consider if and where a line between the two exists. We move in and out of reality, memory, and imagination, witnessing a personal journey through grief, characteristic of so many emotionally-wrought human experiences. Woodrow and Aiden prepare for a Biblical rapture, but their true concerns, like those of the filmmaker, ultimately lie in more Earthly phenomenon--deceit, forgiveness, and sorrow. It's a miracle that individuals as savvy and humble as Mr. Glodell are drawn to filmmaking, for the stories they tell are refreshingly frank and marvelously executed. Explosively operatic yet fleetingly nuanced, drop-forged tough yet quietly tender, Bellflower renders the sentiment of its protagonist and author beautifully, opening what one can only hope is a new chapter in independent filmmaking as it exists today.

                                                 Fielder Jewett