directed by:
Jacques Aldridge written by: Jacques Aldridge genre: Drama |
So if I’ve got everything right here, this whole movie builds on the premise that Wifer Calendez punched out his previous boss? Then he spends a significant amount of time trying to get a job at the same company in a different department? Bro! Y’all still gonna be eating at the same damn lunchroom on your breaks, aren’t ya? How’s that going to work out? This world is way too big to have to come crawling back in through the out door if you ask me - get yourself a different kind of job, Wifer!
I should know better than to expect anything typical from Jacques Aldridge, the same dude who was behind the film “Freaks And Heroes” that we reviewed here at IndyRed last year. That was one heck of a bizarre movie to watch, and believe me when I tell ya, so too is “The World Of Wifer Calendez!” Down the rabbit hole we go once again into a mainly black-and-white film, with lots of quirky characters, strange effect choices, and subtitle screens to help you keep up with the crazy sharp twists in the plotline. I wish you the best of luck! I know firsthand that it’s tough to keep up with the mind of Jacques Aldridge. Various concerns start to get revealed. I think the main impression that I’ve gotten from now having watched a couple of Aldridge’s films is that his attention to detail is strong, but I don’t think we’re always going to agree on which details need to be included. Like…it’s kind of risky to spend the entirety of the opening scene with Wifer’s back to the camera, spending nearly four minutes on the phone with customer support. Wifer spends a fairly significant amount of time on the phone with a few different people as the film progresses, which is, of course, a solidly inexpensive way of doing things, but at the same time, visually, it’s hard to get excited about, you know what I mean? Personally, I think that Aldridge has some space to be a little more giving to his audience onscreen, as in, if he’s going to star in his movies, then not facing the camera at all, or being tucked into the wall with his face obscured by the telephone he’s talkin’ on…I mean, he’s in a medium that’s based on show, not tell. I do enjoy some of the things that Aldridge does with his camera work and how he uses different shots within the same scene, but for example, in a scene like where he’s talking to a guy he thinks is a lawyer, Wifer is sitting right next to a completely blank wall for minutes of screen time talking on the phone again, and there’s really not much of anything at all to retain our attention on a visual level. If you had better access to seeing Aldridge play Wifer…like, if he let us in a bit more and didn’t have so much obstructing our view of him all the time, then maybe this kind of stuff can work. If not, though, then to be honest, Aldridge & his focus on dialogue would likely be much more suited for just making audiobooks instead, you feel me? At the end of the day, though, I think the most legitimate and sizeable concern is whether or not there’s enough of a plotline here to make a movie out of – and I’m not completely sure there is to be truthful. “What’s this about?” asks Quinn Love (played by Gina Long) – it’s a question that resonates, because by the time you hear her say that onscreen, you’ll definitely feel like you want the answer to that yourself. We went from a fairly innocent story about a newly unemployed man who punched his former boss in the mug, to now Wifer is being hunted down by the corporate mafia or something along those lines – all within about a half hour? Again, I’m with Quinn – “What’s this about?” Perhaps more importantly, and to the point, is Aldridge writing his material in a way that would allow the audience the opportunity to follow along without getting lost. I’m not so convinced that’s the case, and I seem to remember that being how I felt when watching Aldridge’s “Freaks And Heroes” last year as well. So, like I was telling you earlier, it’s merely a matter of details, but it’s crucial to get to the ones we need in order to put a story together in a way that’ll be coherent with the audience watching. As you watch Wifer spend time lifting weights in an alley, or getting changed into a disguise beside a house, you have to seriously wonder why he doesn’t seem to be too concerned with putting some kind of visual emphasis on what watchers need to pay their attention to in ways that’ll make sense to them, rather than spend too much time on things that probably don’t factor in. Stylistically, I think we can make an argument that something like “The World Of Wifer Calendez” looks cool, but we need a bit more tangible information onscreen to help us link the details of the plotline from scene to scene. I get the feeling Aldridge’s brain works at quite a rapid speed as a Writer/Director/Actor – but on the other side of the screen and the lens, we need him to slow things down and draw out the details in his storyline and spend less time on what can often feel like insignificant scenes. “People misread you because of your accent,” says Mrs. Blake (played by Hedy MacDonald), and you can count me among them to an extent. I continually debated whether or not the accent worked, and I never really felt like I came to a conclusive answer on that for myself personally.
Mariblanca (played by Annika Hautmann) might be the brightest spot in the supporting cast. Radiant smiles, giant saucer eyes that are kind and filled with curiosity – she needed more screen time than she got, from my perspective. The whole will-they, won’t-they push/pull dynamic that Mariblanca and Wifer had together…it was genuinely kinda cute. I don’t know if we needed the slow-motion effects to show up every time they’re about to touch hands – that seemed a little out of place and a little on the cheesy side, but I did at least like watching Mariblanca and Wifer onscreen together. She’s gotta be a better fit for the guy than the rest of these crazy characters would be, at least, right? I think it’s also fair to say that it’s not like Wifer, aka ‘Wifer the knifer,’ is any kind of significant catch for the ladies either, though – let’s be real here, the guy comes with an immense amount of baggage and very little ability to focus on the things that should probably matter most. “There is a story,” says Bart Cheever (played by David Curington) – and I believe him, even if I’m not entirely sure where it is or whether it warrants becoming a movie. In my opinion, I think Aldridge is somewhat working against himself in trying to encompass very large ideas into a short amount of space…like he’s trying to do a whole mini-series in a short movie. A combination of having more time & using it more wisely would do well for these storytelling adventures. Less time spent on the phone, lifting weights, or hanging out in the same pizza shop would give him more space to spread the details out in a way that would be more coherent to those watching. Even when we arrive full-circle back to Wifer on the phone towards the end with twenty minutes to go, right where we originally started, it’s not like we’re smacked with a heavy realization of an important plotline detail so much as we’re wondering how we got all the way back here after drifting around for so very long. I would be the first to tell you that I’m easily confused, but rarely this confused – trying to make sense of “The World Of Wifer Calendez” proved to be a tougher task than I think I was ready for. I’ve gotta call things like I see’em, though, pass or fail. I felt like “The World Of Wifer Calendez” was a bit of a step back for Aldridge, in comparison to what I’ve seen from him so far. There’s too much and not enough here at the very same time, and I feel like Aldridge would really benefit from narrowing down the scope of what he’s looking to create in order to be able to communicate his ideas to his audience more cohesively. For now, it’s interesting stuff in an underground sort of way, but we need more substance to go with the style. I’m going right down the middle – “The World Of Wifer Calendez” gets 2.5 out of 5 stars from me. |
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