Sew Torn

Sew-Torn
Sew Torn

The krama farce titled ‘Sew Torn’ is a high concept cross-genre fiction that has never been attempted, having gun smoke swirl around a seamstress factory divided into several alternate realities that bear no resemblance to any of the present-day worlds. The film makes no bones about its primary reference to a twelve years old film Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run that must have been released around the time new writer/director/editor Freddy Macdonald was still developing in the state of Immaculate Conception. The film is clinically insane and painfully remarkable to gain audiences since it involves cute American provincial humor, tension derived from a recent crime drama with sewing machines, and sharp comedic ideas, bundled around a protagonist who is a living version of MacGyver with a tiny fabric pouch as an accessory. Some people will find pleasure in the comic absurdity of the film; others will see it as an unfunny pun, but many will be interested in the further development of Macdonald’s creative work.

A bit expansive and regrettably, not that substantial, “Sew Torn” most definitely is a case of Macdonald’s at any rate transferred developing part into his 2019 short of the same name: to complete an already successful calling card, which was purchased by Searchlight pictures, turned UTA into his booking agency and the youngest director in history to be accepted to AFI Conservatory. The feature-length version, however, is still irritatingly studentish and somewhat weak in terms of some aspects Macdonald’s screenplay co-written with his father Fred is delivered with a sledgehammer portraying and repeating the main things in the theme but excels in terms of storytelling and drama as well. This is a co-production of Swiss-U.S. that has already made its first international outing in the popular Piazza Grande section of the Locarno film festival. It has also been successful in receiving attention at the spring edition of the SXSW. Genre-embracing indie distributors will conclusively see how to do it.

“Choices, choices, choices,” goes protagonist Barbara (Eve Connolly) in voiceover early in the film: it is a chant, the viewer will realize as the story unfolds and folds back in on itself, that they are likely to hear a few more times. Addressing the audience, whose choice she invites the audience to judge as a story still to come, she asks: “Do you feel sorry for me or do you look down on me for my moral values?” Most spectators are, probably, not going to do so, at least not in advance of a number of rather more interesting questions. For one thing, what are we doing in a ‘green Switzerland’ when absolutely no one is Swiss and everyone communicates in English? (It can be noted that Macdonald relocated to Switzerland as a child with his family, which at least gives some relevant information regarding the location.) And what is the precise year? We also want to know what is the significance of sewing. Is it a movie for real, in the proper sense of the word?

It isn’t a movie in that sense, as it turns out, although Barbara, with her studious and wholesome image, certainly regards things in such a way. Alone in the world, an orphaned little girl has struggled to keep the mobile seamstress business alive in her mother’s name, as per her mother’s last wish, but she is now almost ready to give up and close the business.

In an imaginary rural Switzamerica, the quirky business does not get regular clients looking for a cross-stitch talking portrait crafted with a speaker. What a world. This qualification of her creativity allows for an unplanned sequence of events at the last minute, such as driving through intermountain valleys in search of a button that ended up getting tossed into the very same valley as the seamstress out of spite when her bride-to-be client lost the button. Cut a lone remaining client, haughty middle-aged bride-to-be Grace (Caroline Goodall), who hires her to adjust her wedding dress. Or scrape together the votes, she feels cut syllable one of.

Fast forward to the current unimagined events as the unplanned drive allows Barbara to discover an unobjected accident scene in what seemed like a quiet bend. Two motorcyclists are critically injured and lying in the middle of the road, while a panicked scene surrounded them with cocaine-laden asphalt. A briefcase of money lies within a plain biker’s grasp. Barbara now decides what she will do with the lot she will steal it, call the police, or carry on driving. Barbara stands to gain quite a ridiculous off or a sequence of follies, but there is no shame in gaining the upper hand over a wild gangster Hudson (John Lynch) and their fearless cop Ms. Engel (K Callan).

The elaborate structures make a compelling argument about the film’s most outlandish feature and indeed its purpose as Barbara goes through the fabrics and makes complex pulleys, binds, and cat’s cradles at one moment lunging through a sea of cotton in an acrobatic fight sequence, choreographed to the oldie musical “The Sewing Machine” by Betty Hutton.

Such are the high dream-like images of the characters that the thriller elements of the story are rendered close to irrelevant or imagination, though Connolly is a captivating enough character to keep us interested in Barbara’s erratic movements and not the moral genesis of the movements. Assisted by the primary filled cinematography of Sebastian Klinger, as well as the pop-to-cozy, time-present blurring production design of Viviane Rapp, “Sew Torn” is a picture of a kiddish adult who has the ability to distort the concepts of aging and death. Should Macdonald succeed in translating this sweet madness for transforming basic fundamentals of reality into a large idea that comes with great stories, then he will be the next big thing.

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