directed by:
A. J. Fitzgerald written by: A. J. Fitzgerald genre: Drama, Comedy |
“Can you please say something?” When you meet Janine for yourself by watching “Blowing Up,” you’ll understand that the question is a monumental ask of the latex protagonist in this short film. In the very first scene that you see with Scott (Don-Dimitri Joseph) basically delivering an emotional monologue, where we’re not all that sure who he’s actually talking to, or if he’s talking to himself, only for the camera to eventually pan over to a latex blow-up doll in the bed, I smiled. The art of the reveal is always a tremendous asset to any film when it’s used in the right way, and watching this film start to make its moves was genuinely quite intriguing.
So of course, I continue to watch – and to me, how “Blowing Up” played on - was what made things even funnier – that same (arguably) lifeless doll seemed to have no problem at all navigating its way from scene to scene and place to place just like you or I would, and it quickly becomes the film’s central character. It was definitely not what I was expecting, and it was a pleasant surprise. I’m always going to be an advocate for the strange, weird & unique – and it doesn’t take long at all before you realize just how many of those particular boxes that “Blowing Up” checks off. Everyone in a scene with Janine plays it like they’re in the room with a normal, flesh & blood, functional human being, and nobody breaks from that. Wonderful! Even when Janine gets caught up in an intense love triangle, the other two sides of that triangle do not let us in on their blow-up friend not being real. People wait for Janine to speak, they ask her questions, they have active dialogue with her – heck, a server even informs her about the specials on the menu at a restaurant – and for all accounts and purposes, it’s like Janine is as real as you are to all the people she comes across. It’s her birthday after all…and I guess it’d be rude not to treat her as a real person despite the funny look on Janine’s face that never changes & stares straight ahead. Circling back to that original question at the top of this review – “can you please say something?” – you’ll see this scenario quickly become a careful what you wish for situation. The beginning half of “Blowing Up” hints at some drama & tragedy in the works, but it’s masked cleverly through the comedy on display as Janine makes her way through a day in her life. Told in five parts altogether, you’re not likely to see much out there like what you’ll see in this film, written & directed by A.J. Fitzgerald. Each part along the way smartly adds more to the storyline and helps us fill in the blanks as we watch, and you’ll likely be surprised at where “Blowing Up” ends up after where it all began. This isn’t comparable to something like “Her,” where Joaquin Phoenix fell in love with a computer, though I’m sure there are likely to be a few fragments of the story that could potentially overlap to a degree. Fitzgerald’s film feels fresh, and I like that. Janine is a character I didn’t feel like I’ve seen before, and she made it totally easy to get into watching “Blowing Up,” because right from the moment you meet her, you instantly have to wonder how this entire story revolves around her, and why no one seems to acknowledge she’s a doll. It’s not just that none of the characters in the film take any time to recognize this out loud; it’s the fact that they have some extremely deep conversations with her that are probably deeper than the ones you’ve been having with your own friends. It’s an aspect of this film that can make it funny in a bizarre way, but it’s also the most crucial element of “Blowing Up” as well, because it’s what allows Fitzgerald to flex his muscles as a writer & supply all the intricate details of this story through the dialogue that’s shared.
That same very dialogue is going to shift the whole demeanour of this film from one side of the spectrum straight over to the other, and believe me when I tell ya, you’ll know precisely when that happens. You’ll see “Blowing Up” essentially abandon most of its drive to be comedic in favor of getting pretty damn dark by the end, and through the smart script that Fitzgerald has created, you’ll see that something like that is coming as you watch along the way, even if it’s impossible to know exactly what it’ll be or what would cause this to shift into a gloomier concept. I think essentially we can boil it down to a fictional version of some very real stuff, which pairs very well with a fictional character and the real-life people surrounding Janine in the film. Having said that, I think we’ll all really like how the character of Janine develops from start to finish here – you might not be expecting there to be a character arc with a blow-up doll, but just you sit down & watch, and you’ll discover something different. Janine endures through a bunch of bullshit along the way from relationship problems to work problems, and those aren’t even the main ones so much as the more amusing ones – but you’ll probably realize you have much more in common with this latex leading character than you likely would have thought. Like so many people out there, Janine is a layered personality…protected…what we see on the surface isn’t necessarily what’s underneath, and just as it is with most cases like that, they’re holding everything in until they explode. Is it crystal clear from start to finish? I think that’d be a bit of a stretch to say that, but I’m also okay with it. “Blowing Up” is short, and I’m always willing to watch something twice if I’m interested. Once you get to the end of Fitzgerald’s film, you immediately have to wonder how much you would have been able to put together with the additional information you now have, so for me it was a no-brainer – I had to watch this twice. Mind you, all the initial confusion is intentional – Fitzgerald designed the story and structure to be exactly like it is –, but I’d still likely say that by the end, you’re still wondering a little bit about the connections between the fiction and reality at the heart of this story. My theory, more than anything else, is that the latex is more of a metaphorical thing…Like I alluded to earlier, it’s a protective layer of sorts, an emotional armour, if you will. I think we’ve all had moments where being alive doesn’t really feel like living at all, and being a lifeless doll is yet another perfect vehicle to illustrate that point. Janine (Maria Todero) has gone through some devastating emotional turmoil, and it seems like she might never snap out of it. Is that something we’re all capable of? Is that something we all have to do? “I just fix myself…I turn it on like a light switch…I just smile?” she asks Miranda (Danielle Rodd) & Scott. But grief doesn’t work like that, does it? You know it, I know it, and all these characters know it too. There is no timeline for getting better after we experience something tragic; we just do the best we can to take things one day at a time. For those outside of the situation, it can seem like an agonizing amount of time to go through where you’ve lost a friend, or someone you know gets lost in despair, seemingly to never return. As much as we might wish we could make someone better, they’re not on our timeline, they’re on their own – and you can see how much Janine’s devastation affects Miranda & Scott on multiple levels. Todero has some of her most incredible scenes staring straight ahead into the camera at the end, breaking down as she listens to an old voicemail. Fitzgerald did a magnificent job with the dialogue, the script is unique, the acting is pretty solid across the board, and Todero raises the stakes even further with her scenes before the end. Bonus points for the very last chapter of this story, which might actually make another major point about how replaceable we all can be in the workplace, but it was the hit of light we needed after so much darkness. Three and a half stars outta five from me. |
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