Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Arabella Oz, Nick Canellakis
Starring: Arabella Oz, Nick Canellakis, Anjelica Bosboom, Delphi Harrington, Shahjehan Khan, Evangeline Beasley
Arabella Oz announces herself in some style on three distinct fronts as the star, writer and director (sharing the latter role with her husband and co-star Nick Canellakis) of Mallory's Ghost. It's a film that opens with the sort of setup you might expect from an indie comedy, only to venture off into surprisingly intellectual but never distancing territory.
Oz plays Mallory, whose playwright boyfriend Sam (Canellakis) is struggling to pen a follow-up to his first well-received play. Seeking inspiration, Sam convinces Mallory to accompany him to the secluded rural Maine home of his former writing professor Lorna (Delphi Harrington). Mallory, who has harboured creative ambitions without ever taking the leap of acting on them, immediately begins to feel secure in the company of the two writers. As if that wasn't enough, she learns that three years earlier Sam brought a previous girlfriend, Louise (Anjelica Bosboom), to Lorna's home, where they wrote a play together.
Displaying either ignorance, insensitivity or a mixture of both, Sam dismisses Mallory's insecurity ("Can't we be European about this?"), but Mallory becomes wracked with jealousy. She stares at the beatific photos on Louise's social media accounts and reads the play she wrote with Sam, which is filled with explicit accounts of the sort of erotic encounters Mallory doesn't appear to have enjoyed with Sam. When Mallory begins to see a shadowy figure lurking around the grounds, she becomes convinced that she is being haunted by Louise, despite Louise being very much alive.
Oz juggles her film's mix of relationship comedy and ghost story in the manner of a classic Bob Hope caper. The comedy is played for laughs but we're also asked to take the supernatural elements seriously. Oz and Canellakis have a natural rapport reminiscent of Diane Keaton and Woody Allen, and there is a musicality to their dialogue, like two seasoned jazz musicians who know just when to butt in for the right effect. Mallory's obsessive insecurity is amusing but also relatable, and we begin to feel sorry for her rather than dismissing her fears. It's a rare case of a character that we both laugh at and with.
The ghost story element is enlivened by clever use of the film's striking location, a classic case of a low budget endeavour following the advice of every film school instructor to find a great location and build a movie around it. Every nook and cranny of the house and its grounds are exploited while cinematographer Jeff Griecci bathes it in a teal and amber lighting scheme reminiscent of Dean Cundey's work on John Carpenter's Halloween.
It's in the second half of Mallory's Ghost that things take a metaphysical turn and we realise that the film isn't simply about a woman's jealousy towards another woman. Rather Mallory is insecure about her creative ambitions, and she has built Louise into a vision of perfection with whom she can't possibly compete. Mallory's Ghost becomes a film about a young woman finding the courage to follow her own muse and ignore the imposter syndrome she might feel. As Mallory grows comfortable with herself and begins to write she is framed working in the sort of beautifully composed shots usually reserved for a biopic of a Bronte sister. What begins as a ghost story ultimately reveals itself to be a study of a woman exorcising her own demons of self doubt. Let's hope Oz continues to follow her own muse.
