The amount of heart that goes into these independent features makes me wish I could say something better about Junction. The producers spend many meticulous moments charting every inch of the shoot. The production assistants do all that they’re told in hopes they can gel the old resume. The actors do their best on a budget and think that this film might launch their otherwise non-blossoming careers. The writer put their soul onto the pages of the script. The director spends hours planning every single shot of the film to make the final text look good enough for the indie circuits. And I spent 90 minutes wondering what all of these people were thinking.
Conjunction junction, what’s your function? I couldn’t get the grade school song out of my head. What was Junction’s function? There wasn’t one. The story was so hard and the characters so jaded that I was left wondering why it was that I was supposed to care. The movie starts off with the end. I generally hate movies like this. The goal is for the audience to stick around to figure out how the story got to its end. But doesn’t it make more sense to just watch a story unfold in order? I’m not talking about innovative story-telling like Memento—that’s something completely different. Flashbacks, flash forwards, reverse order, non-sequential order throughout. All of these are OK. I’m talking specifically about movies in which you get two or three minutes of a dramatic event and then find out why you were watching it 90 minutes later.
Michaela (April Wade) is a struggling photographer looking for an interesting subject so she can snap some good shots and land a photojournalist gig. Victoria (Lira Kellerman) is a pregnant college student who is serious with her boyfriend, Shane (Edward Gusts). Both Michaela and Victoria are trying to become respectable citizens while dealing with problems with their mothers: one’s an alcoholic and the other’s convinced that there are Thanksgiving pilgrims roaming her house. That’s right, real gold-buckled pilgrims. As you can see, the girls have it rough as it is. They are strangers at the start of the movie (save for the first three minutes of course) and sisters by the end. Michaela starts stalking Victoria to find out about the girl who shares the same father, only to discover that Shane, Victoria’s boyfriend, is their brother. Victoria becomes outraged (naturally) and the story unwinds down a bumpy path.
While Junction had a few flaws, the basic story was interesting. I mean, who doesn’t love a long lost sisters/pregnant by your brother story? Some flaws in an indie flick are forgivable. Flaws like uneven handheld camerawork, bad lighting, or even the occasional inappropriate song choice can be forgiven when its indie because they don’t have the funding to be as precise as a big budget blockbuster from Paramount or MGM. But the one flaw that is not understandable is creating a terribly dramatic story, but never giving the audience time to care about the characters.
Usually after those three-minute-ending-intros we get to see a slower moment, an intimate moment. These moments allow us to care for the characters and it is for this reason we want to stick around for what the story will bring. Junction is the type of movie that you’ll watch for ten minutes and then turn off because you just won’t care. And why bother if you don’t care? I didn’t. Of course I had to finish it, which again, wasn’t a total loss because the story is interesting…but I just didn’t care at all. Conjunction Junction, what’s your function? No function at all. It doesn’t make you care, it doesn’t make you want, it doesn’t make you need to finish it. It just introduces a rough story and then vanishes just about as quick as it slapped you with it.
DVD Bonus Features
Not one to speak of.
"Junction" is on sale April 21, 2009 and is rated NR. Indie. Directed by Neal Fradsham. Written by Lira Kellerman, James Ryan. Starring April Wade, Edward Gusts, Lira Kellerman.
