Movies You May Have Missed: Lovely by Surprise (2007) ****
Lovely by Surprise: Coming to DVD 7/7/09
Plenty of mediocre indies get picked up for distribution at film festivals every year which makes it all the more galling when good ones like Kirt Gunn’s unexpectedly terrific Lovely by Surprise slip through the cracks. The film premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival in 2007 where it won the New American Cinema Special Jury Prize and then it made a string of festival appearances without a pick up. After that it appears to have been four-walled in select cities around the country. This Tuesday it’s finally coming to DVD where a wider audience will have a chance to see it at last. They would be wise to do so because Lovely by Surprise has a lot to recommend it.
The story involves three narrative threads, the center of which is Marian, a blocked novelist writing a story about characters who are influenced by actual events in the real world. The second thread exists within Marian’s story and it follows Mopekey and Humkin, two doughy, unshaven man-children who live on a boat in the middle of a fallow cornfield. They wear only green underpants and subsist on sweetened breakfast cereal and milk. The third thread involves a depressed wreck of a car salesman named Bob whose wife has died and whose daughter hasn’t spoken since.
When Marian’s former professor advises her to give her story some conflict by killing off one of her characters, Humkin escapes into the real world where he turns up at Bob’s car dealership and the three narrative threads merge.
In less confident hands, such a story could quickly devolve into an indie stew of Kaufmanesque quirk and cleverness. Luckily, Gunn isn’t interested in mimicry nor does he engage in the kind of arch, distancing hipsterism that plagues so many small, first-time films. There’s a genuine emotional core to his story and some of the film’s more fanciful turns are a mechanism to approach it rather than a means to bury it.
To make it work, Gunn has rallied a talented cast of character actors. Carrie Preston (Transamerica, Doubt and the upcoming That Evening Sun) plays Marian with a note of tentativeness. She’s clearly a woman with issues and she’s a little stuck inside her own head. Reg Rogers (Analyze That) is perfect as Bob, a hallow shell of a man trying desperately to put one foot in front of the other and get his life back together. Rogers reads his slightly off-kilter dialogue with just the right dryly humorous pitch and he keeps Bob from seeming truly pathetic. As the escapee Humkin, Michael Chernus is a man-sized infant. All belly and soft physique, he trundles around with the guileless expression of a newborn. He’s a little annoying at first, but he grows on you and by the time he forms an unexpected bond with another character, he’s won you over.
Anchoring the cast are familiar supporting faces Richard Masur (The Thing, Risky Business) as Bob’s boss Dave and Austin Pendleton (The Notorious Bettie Page, Searching for Bobby Fischer) as Jackson, Marian’s former professor and lover.
Another bright spot is the inventive cinematography of Steve Yedlin whose fluid, curiously framed shots will be familiar to fans of Rian Johnson’s Brick and The Brothers Bloom. As he did for Johnson, he gives this tiny budgeted film a veneer of smoothness and professionalism that sets it apart from the average indie.
Rounding the film out is a terrific score credited to trippy singer-songwriter Shelby Bryant (a native of Memphis Tennessee where the film was shot), but also featuring tunes by late ’90s indie pop musicians The Magnetic Fields, the jazz sounds of The Rob Wagner Trio and even a Tom Waits number. It’s an eclectic mix that perfectly fuses with the photography in setting the film’s unique tone.
The only thing that keeps Lovely by Surprise from perfection is a vaguely dissatisfying resolution. It’s an ending that makes perfect logical sense, but it’s a bit unfair to an audience who may have become emotionally invested in certain characters more than others. To say anything more would be to spoil the film so suffice it to say that the good far outweighs the bad.
Though it has many of the hallmarks of the kind of fey indie films that are currently giving indie cinema a bad name, Lovely by Surprise deploys all its cleverness in the service of story and emotion rather than using it as a distancing technique. Buoyed by terrific performances, polished camerawork and a pleasing soundtrack, it transcends its genre and budget to deliver a unique work of cinema that leaves you hoping for more from all involved.
Lovely by Surprise. USA 2007. Written and directed by Kirt Gunn. Cinematography by Steve Yedlin. Music by Shelby Bryant. Edited by Jimmy Helton. Starring Carrie Preston, Michael Chernus, Austin Pendleton, Dallas Roberts, Reg Rogers, Kate Burton, Richard Masur and Lena Lamer. 1 hour 40 minutes. Not rated by the MPAA. 4 stars (out of 5)
Filed under: DVD, Reviews
Tags: Austin Pendleton, Carrie Preston, Dallas Roberts, Jimmy Helton, Kate Burton, Kirt Gunn, Lena Lamer, Lovely by Surprise, Michael Chernus, Reg Rogers, Richard Masur, Shelby Bryant, Steve Yedlin
My darling crabcake, I guess I’m the lone holdout.
Danny, Rick Olson and Marilyn Ferdinand all gave LBS positive reviews.
We all got screeners. Marilyn went to a Chicago cinema and saw it.
The kindest thing that I can say about it was it was like nails on a blackboard (FOR ME). I would rather have done…well, just about anything else.
Four stars…???
Now that’s a lovely surprise.
Or…NOT.
It’s definitely not a movie that is going to appeal to all people…which is honestly one of the things that makes it great. I’d hope that people can tell from the review whether it’s the kind of movie they’d enjoy and not just go by the star rating.
For its type of movie, I’m comfortable with the 4-star rating.
I cannot describe in words how much I hated this movie.
I avoided reviewing it out of sympathy. The people behind this seem like good, creative folks with a passion for filmmaking. I didn’t want to give them any bad press.
I totally agree with Miranda here…it’s like nails on a chalkboard.
Well, it sounds exactly like my cup of tea and I’m looking forward to getting a chance to watch it as soon as possible. I’ve become a big fan of Carrie Preston, who is good in everything I see her in, from Wonderfalls years ago to That Evening Sun, Lost, Doubt, and most recently True Blood. My concern would likely be that the quirk was too contrived, but your review seems to indicate that it really is in service to the story and has an emotional core, so that fear is assuaged.
It’s not a movie I would have pegged for either of you two, though, from what I know of your tastes.
Sounds interesting. I’ve added this to my Netflix queue.
The idea of the fictional character escaping into the real world reminds me of Woody Allen, who of course used that concept with comical effect in his writings (books like Without Feathers), and in movies like The Purple Rose of Cairo.
Would you argue Matthew that it was badly done or did it just rub you the wrong way? I can see a lot of room for the latter for a lot of people, but I’d defend it in terms of craftsmanship.
It sucked me into its weird groove and it worked for me.
JB, Carrie Preston was great!
I hope I haven’t steered you wrong Alison, but I guess that’s the chance we all take, isn’t it?
Both. The humor all seemed very forced and contrived to me. They were just trying too hard, and it had the feel of an amateur production.
It struck me as everything that is wrong with indie quirk. Real indie quirk, not mainstream JUNO indie quirk.
“Hey, if we constantly pronounce relish as “melish,” that’s funny, right?”
The whole thing just made my skin crawl.
I totally disagree.
It was light years ahead of so much indie festival crap and far from amateur.
The cinematography and performances especially set it apart. I had some strong issues with the story I won’t get into here because they’re spoilery, but the rest was unexpectedly well done.
The quirky aspects of it are an easy target. Any film with two characters running around in their underpants with the names Mopekey and Humkin is going to face an uphill battle holding its audience, but I really didn’t think it was quirk for quirk’s sake, which is really the problem with quirk in the first place.
So, I think you’re dead wrong in your estimation of the quality, though I can’t argue with your response to the film over all. I suspect it will make the skin crawl of a lot of people who cant find their way inside its weird bubble. That’s ok. This movie is not Juno.
It’s ok. I’m comfortable being dead wrong here.
Good, your comfort is paramount.
I went to order it from Amazon, actually, and though it releases today, they and everywhere else are out of stock. I guess it makes no sense to spend money owning a movie I haven’t seen, but it’s less than two movie tickets would have been. Besides, my Netflix is suspended for the time being (while I catch up on other films) and I would like to hurry up and see it. And anyway, the column in Filmmaker Magazine made me happy and I feel like helping the little film out. I figure, even if I don’t like it, somebody I know would, and I can always pass it along. I just wonder how long before anyone has any in stock. Maybe they don’t until people start ordering them. Seems problematic to me.
I wouldn’t say I had a problem with the cinematography/construction of the film. It was the acting and writing I didn’t particularly like. Especially the writing, which I thought was very weak.
Some other interesting titles releasing this week:
Lonely But the Brave (Kirk Douglas; Universal)
Beau Geste (Gary Cooper; Universal)
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (Universal)
The John Barrymore Collection (Kino)
Lola Montes (Ophuls; Second Sight Region 2)
That last UK release of course is reason for celebration, though I have high hopes Criterion will announce this soon.
Weird JB that they were sold out. Either their grassroots campaign really worked or there was some hiccup in the supply.
Matthew, though I might sound like it, I’m really not trying to strongarm you into liking the movie. I actually did have some problems with the screenplay, though I wouldn’t say it was very weak.