BEESWAX (USA/2009/ANDREW BUJALSKI)

Jeannie is a wheelchair user who runs a colourful boutique. At the beginning of Beeswax, we see Jeannie meeting with a potential employee, presenting herself as an organised, authoritative figure as if to spite her public image as a ‘disabled’ person. Jeannie has a happy-go-lucky twin sister named Lauren who struggles with the concept of commitment and doesn’t seem to have much structure in her life. Her biggest plan in the pipeline is a mission to Kenya to teach English to children, a scheme which she sees as incompatible with her current relationship. The sisters live their lives separately, but constantly consult one another about work, money and love.

Director Andrew Bujalski is known as one of the bastions of the mumblecore movement, which generally sees as its enemy the artifice of cinema. Beeswax’s most impressive feat is its realism, and all of the actors embrace their roles to the point of living them, but that doesn’t amount to a great deal when the slice of life under the microscope is not particularly notable. It is thus hard to understand exactly what Bujalski wants to tell us about life beyond his fantasy that everyone dabbles in the same hopelessly charming idiolect, and a lot of the dialogue borders on preciousness. Bujalski’s previous feature, the vastly superior Mutual Appreciation, succeeded for the warmth and innocence of its protagonist, and this is perhaps what Beeswax lacks the most. Bujalski is a very promising filmmaker, and one hopes that Beeswax is an anomaly.

MUTUAL APPRECIATION (USA/2005/ANDREW BUJALSKI)

Mutual Appreciation is as much a milestone of indie filmmaking as it is a victim of its own pretences. As with many of the other mumblecore films I’ve watched, the observer paradox seems to pervade much of the dialogue, much of which feels calculatingly awkward – one can distinguish between the improvised lines and premeditated lines. It is easy to believe that the makers of these films are very similar to their characters – young, confused, directionless – but the fact that the focus most often falls on the progeny of the last bourgeois generation takes away the integrity of this gritty, frugal filming style.

Having said that, the film does convey the relationships between its characters realistically, and some scenes successfully epitomise the unpredictability of life. I was particularly struck by one scene where Alan (Justin Rice) is besieged by women at a ‘party’ he wasn’t certain about going to in the first place, and is eventually persuaded to don a dress and make-up. Here it seems the actors were given the most room to ad-lib, and Rice tackles the daunting task convincingly. It’s a brilliant piece of footage which seems to speak to the majority of young adults and their issues with projecting identity.

Overall, the film is a satisfying experience if you allow yourself to believe in it. Given Hollywood’s transparent efforts to channel the “indie” aesthetic, it’s something of a find. However, without condemning the whole mumblecore movement, I think I sympathise more with its critics than its fans.