There’s something deeply satisfying about a film that goes meta and admits to the viewer that it knows they’re watching false events unfold; when used in the right amount the meta quality of a film actually offers the audience an additional layer to the story that a straight 2D narrative just can’t. While it’s easy to misuse this added dimension, it’s also easy to get over ambitious and take the concept too far. A Love Affair of Sorts takes a shot of going meta on a film already based in a meta narrative about filmmaking, which could work if done correctly, but A Love Affair of Sorts piles too many demands onto the viewer in the process.
David (David Guy Levy) films everything, including his chance encounter with Hungarian nanny Enci (Lili Bordan) who is at the time considering shoplifting a book. Acting on a philanthropic impulse, David buys her the book and the two hit it off in one of those serendipitous social encounters that can’t be planned. They reveal their personal worlds to one another and, liking what they see of one another, they pledge to spend the week together, each with a flipcam, and record the other person’s life as they get to know them – no matter what, even if that means David has to follow Enci along on her date with her friend Boris (Ivan Kamaras). As they film they grow closer and a romance blossoms.
Of course, the romance blossoming within David and Enci’s film project is just a fictional world created by David in the creation of a film about two strangers creating a film about removing the distance between one another. Outside of the David and Enci story, David and Lili have a different relationship, wherein Lili isn’t sure how she views David as a friend and whether or not the romance on film is a sham or something reflective of reality.
At first, the film within a film within a film is confusing as it’s not at all defined for the audience and the realities the film is working through aren’t clarified, ever. Our only distinction of depth is when Lili drops her Hungarian accent. While that unto itself is disorienting, the shaky nature of filming on flipcams and a certain level of indecision about the level of editing the final, actual film should receive are the ultimate undoing of the story.
David Guy Levy also directed the film, and while he was able to sort out the three different layers within the film, he lost grasp of continuity when he edited certain scenes outside of the deeper “David & Enci” film. If the film is going to reflect the entire romantic conflict between David and Lili, then the scenes where David and Lili are discussing the overall creation of the two stories within “David & Enci” can’t be edited – they have to be entirely intact, which would mean every “David and Lili” take in the film would have to be done correctly with no cuts, otherwise there’s a fourth layer on top of it that’s editing everything underneath without giving the audience rhyme or reason.
I’m all for films attempting to strain and break new ground in the number of simultaneous realities that can exist within a single stream of consciousness, but A Love Affair of Sorts only managed to handle two of its three and consequently an entire third of the film defies its own established rules. That’s the problem that exists for people that make it all the way through, but it’s not hard to believe that many will be thrown off by the film’s flipcam medium. It fits the story, but that doesn’t change the fact that the quality of video is quite low and the amount of time wasted with the camera pointed nowhere of interest is too high. Also lost is the commentary on our Reality TV culture, the idea of living in front of a camera and behind as two different personalities, mostly because only Lili succeeds in creating the duality. David’s character is just mopey across the board. Does this make him more real? Or does it just mean he can’t act? That’s the problem with meta filmmaking.
"A Love Affair of Sorts" opens June 24, 2011 and is not rated. Drama. Written and directed by David Guy Levy. Starring David Guy Levy, Ivan Kamaras, Lili Bordan.
