A struggling photographer's life takes a strange turn with the reappearance of the ex-girlfriend he
believed was dead.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Howard Goldberg
Starring: Alexander Calvert, Caylee Cowan, Kahyun Kim
Writer/director Howard Goldberg's 1975 feature debut Apple Pie was a minor cult classic of its era and became a fixture on a then
thriving midnight movie circuit. We don't really have a midnight movie
circuit anymore, but movies like Neil Breen's Cade: The Tortured Crossing and Douglas Burke's Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear have recently found their way onto cinema screens through one-off
event screenings, and have been embraced by fans of so-bad-it's-genius
cinema. Hopefully Goldberg can get his latest - Double Exposure, only his fourth film in a 50-year career - into similar screenings, as
it's very much a crowd-pleaser, if the crowd can tune into its bonkers
wavelength.
The movie establishes its tone from the off, opening with an over the
phone argument between struggling photographer Peter (Alexander Calvert), who is driving through Los Angeles, and his lawyer wife Lora (Kahyun Kim), who is getting sloshed on wine back at home. Through a dialogue
exchange that makes Tommy Wiseau's The Room seem positively Sorkinesque, we learn that Lora believes Peter is
still in love with his ex-girlfriend Sara (Caylee Cowan), who
passed away four years ago. Peter insists he's over Sara, but while
arguing he seemingly gets involved in an accident, only to find his car is
undamaged. Minutes later he receives a phone call from none other than
Sara, who apparently is still very much alive and living nearby.
"All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream, " Edgar Allan
Poe famously wrote. In Goldberg's film all we see or seem is but a dream
within a dream within a flashback within a dream within a flashback within
a flash forward within an out of body experience within a dream within a
flashback. Or something. Sara's surprise phone call sparks off a
head-melting surreal narrative that flashes back to the beginning of Peter
and Sara's courtship while inter-cutting with what we assume is the
present day, only for the two to bleed into each other to the point where
it's impossible to keep track of the plot, which probably doesn't make a
whole lot of sense anyway.
My guess is that Goldberg is aiming for a distinctively LA neo-noir like
those David Lynch movies set in the City of Angels (he regularly employs
that blurry effect so beloved of Lynch), where innocents are corrupted by
the lure of fame. There are stock Tinseltown villains like a sleazy Harvey
Weinstein-esque publisher and a hilariously skeezy photographer (Simon Kim) who prides himself on banging all of his models, including Sara. But
Goldberg clearly doesn't have an ounce of Lynch's talent for this
material, and the entertainment value comes in how oddly executed this
whole affair is.
Double Exposure is one of those bad movies that can only be made in LA, where
there's a surplus of talent so desperate for work that they won't ask
questions no matter how ridiculous a script they're working with. It has
the perfectly fine but bland visual look of a Lifetime movie, and Cowan's
enjoyably deranged dingbat performance as Sara suggests that may be where
her future lies. The acting never sinks to the level of similar scale
productions made in more provincial American cities. But everything is
just slightly off, like the awkward blocking and editing that will have
characters appear on screen in a manner that makes it all too clear they
were standing just out of shot awaiting instructions to enter the scene.
You can tell most of the actors here are perfectly capable, but they
either deliver their terrible dialogue with palpable embarrassment or in
the case of Kim, decide it's best to embrace the insanity and dial
everything up to 11.
It's difficult to describe the distinctively weird vibe created by the
mixing of a capable if workmanlike cast and crew with a director whose
bizarre vision they simply can't translate. But trust me, it's hilarious.
I watched this alone at home on a screener, and I found myself growing
increasingly envious of anyone lucky enough to catch this with a festival
crowd or at the sort of event screening it truly warrants. There are
moments of sheer madness that will bring the house down and lines that I
can see being printed on t-shirts by enthusiastic fans of trash cinema (my
personal fave: "You capture people's souls...but where's yours?"). Trying
to write about a movie as indescribably insane as Double Exposure is akin to attempting to convey the thrill of a great rollercoaster
through words; it's a futile effort. Nothing I say can prepare you for the
illicit joy of Double Exposure.
