Prairie Love

2011 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A hunter in frozen North Dakota saves a stranded man's life and later steals his identity in order to meet his pen pal girlfriend upon her release from prison for sexual reasons.

This is a very quiet movie, like the Coen's Fargo with the sound and style turned all the way down. That's not necessarily a terrible thing. I enjoyed the leisurely pace and attention to details that don't really matter at all. There are shots of rattling things on the main character's rickety trailer, and they don't add to the character much or the plot at all, but they lend some flavor to the movie. The director, by the way, is named Dusty Bias, and this is his debut. I'll be following his career, mostly because his name is Dusty Bias. He takes things so slowly here which allows the viewer to absorb everything. That keeps things kind of uneasy since there's really not that much to absorb. A lot of people will find this thing too slow and the characters too unattractive and uninteresting. And a lot of people probably won't find this very funny although it is a darkish comedy--kind of a grayish comedy. There's ill-fitting underpants during a run through the snow, perhaps the bravest and coldest-looking running I've seen since that guy in that Inuit movie, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. A frozen deer prop is used in funny ways, including an odd parallel episode where characters suggest to the guy, "Maybe you should taste its blood." Things move from naturalistic to just plain goofy with a play dinner, and the main character dressing up as a cowboy, making pow-pow-pow sounds, and saying, "Look at me. I'm a cowboy, ya know." This is a comfortably odd comedy that I'm glad I accidentally watched.

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