The promotional material claims this film to be "provocative" and "honest." It also says that our heroine is "determined to buck the materialism and spiritual sterility of modern society." As I sit to write these comments a day after seeing the film, I try to re-view this film through the window of each claim. I agree it is provocative, but I experienced the provocation as contrived because the writer/director (Zach Winestine) appears to be attempting to shock the audience rather than letting Lisa's exploration unfold in a natural way. Some of her actions (which I will not disclose) I found unreconciled, uncharacteristic, and baffling. I do not cheer her on, nor did I sense anyone in the sparse audience was in her corner. Instead. I want to invite her to tea (at least I care that much about her) so that we might chat about the variety of options life has to offer... perhaps you could try....? At the beginning, I experienced some of the "honesty" the promotional material claims for itself. I found Lisa's initial expression of self-doubts to be wonderfully human. I also found Jennifer Van Dyck's portrayal of Lisa to be honest and mostly endearing. But I spent 84 minutes of my time trying to find the deeper meaning it purported to evoke. If this is truly a film about "bucking materialism and spiritual sterility of modern society" (I admit, I did not feel that at any time through the film), I would conclude that she is using the same tactics that create materialism and spiritual sterility wherever it is found in modern society. The threads of the story do not hold together for me. Rather, I see the film as a series of events that try to fool us into believing that this depicts the lives of real people. Surely, people do act in unpredictable, unexplainable ways -- a film is an incredible opportunity to display such actions visually to people who sit in the dark, focused solely on the screen. As I sat in the dark, I kept wanting more depth. I wanted to know more about Lisa's true thoughts and feelings, which were not (for me, anyway) depicted by her chosen actions.
Review of States of Control
