Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Patrick Letterii
Starring: Ricardo Dávila, Blake DeLong, Emma Duncan, Emma Lahti, Ronald Peet, David
Rysdahl, Jasmin Walker
My heart was in my mouth at the start of writer/director Patrick Letterii’s indie drama The Land of Owls. In the year’s most suspenseful scene we see a young woman chopping an
onion. Chopping an onion with a bluntish yet large and heavy looking
vegetable knife. Her chopping board is slippery and in order to steady the
potentially rogue allium she is PUSHING IT DOWN WITH TWO FINGERS THE TIPS
OF WHICH WOULD BE DIRECTLY IN THE CLUMSY SWATHE OF THE VEGETABLE KNIFE IF
THE ONION WERE TO SLIP (for more advice on how to safely chop an onion:
simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_chop_an_onion/). It wasn’t just the precarious situation which put the willies up me,
but the soupy, lachrymose score, which communicated a poignant longing;
the same sort of weepy regret one may undergo during a life without
fingertips. It’s alright though as *spoiler* no one’s digits actually get
diced. However, the tearful character is clearly upset about something or
other (unless it’s just the onion fumes getting to her).
Phew! This narrative restlessness, a sense of disorientation, continues
throughout the first act or so of The Land of Owls. A consummate professional, I try to not read anything about films
before I review them, and as such on spec I had no idea that Letterii’s
film was a modest indie drama about relationships. As a pair of couples
arrive at a woodland sanctuary which has this weird, culty ambiance (they
have to wear pyjama-like uniforms), I was getting major
Midsommar
vibes...
Yet as the film progressed, and it became clear that the two couples (one
gay, one straight) had come to the dedicated retreat for therapy to save
their respective relationships, I was hoping for some sort of major gender
bending freakout, with the designations gay and straight losing all
meaning in the bacchanalia of the forest’s nightscape, and everyone
shagging (a sort of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for millennials).
Disappointingly though, it turns out that that
The Land of Owls is simply another one of those films about
middle class twentysomethings talking about their frankly pedestrian
relationships for an hour or so.
But not even that, because a fatal narrative flaw is that we don’t really
know much about our couples when they rock up, we are positioned to accept
that they are good looking professionals with slightly bohemian bents (one
is a laptop music maker, etc). Why should we care? Other people’s
relationship woes - they’re up there with hearing about other people’s
dreams. We watch as the gang undergo couples therapy: ‘Who ARE you? No,
who are YOU?’, an earth mother counsellor hectors the retreatants (in a
manner that couldn’t help but remind me of Lester Beck in
The Day Today). One wonders why these people would put their destinies in the hands of
hippy strangers. I mean, they’re not married couples with the fate of
their children’s psychologies resting upon their unity. After all, they
could only have been together for a matter of years - perhaps it's time to
kiss a new frog?
The disjunct is illustrated by a quite astonishing scene involving the
heterosexual couple abandoning a sex act in the privacy of their quarters.
He goes south, south with his mouth, and we witness the act in a
compromising, static mid-shot. She gets going, and just as she’s revving
to a climax, he (for some reason) pulls away. Presumably, the idea is that
this refreshingly intimate scene demonstrates their incompatibility in bed
(he ‘rushes’ things) - but surely this isn’t the first sexual
disappointment, or at least the first time the female fraction has spoken
up about old quick draw McGraw down there. It took a badgering at a luxury
retreat to get to the point where you can talk about basic bedroom manners
with your partner? Yikes. You’ve got a lot of luxury retreats ahead of
you, girl.
Turns out that the have-a-go chef from the film’s prologue has been
languishing at the retreat since a would-be palliative visit ended with
her troubled relationship finally going belly up. At one point, to
emphasise the emotional resonance of her half-scoffed compatriot, she gets
her acoustic guitar out and starts finger picking some dirge. The vanity
of these people. Where’s an errant vegetable knife when you need one?
The Land of Owls is on US VOD from
August 17th. A UK/ROI release has yet to be announced.
