by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Laura Petracco, Jacob Lefton, Jessica Sy
Intro:
It is life, improvised, in all its pain and gradual relief.
On the 18th of December 2021, filmmaker Ivan Malekin uploaded a short film called Goose & Gander to the Nexus Production Group YouTube channel (which can be found here). It was an installment of NPG’s ‘Life Improvised’ series, filmed over the space of a single day with little to no external resources or even film crew, where the dialogue is improvised from a rough story outline. While retroscripting like this is nothing new (one of Malekin’s big influences is the works of Mike Leigh, who utilised it extensively), that naturalistic approach to depicting a couple dealing with the fallout of infidelity gave it an unexpected amount of punch.
Naturally, expanding the material into a full feature only amplifies that discomfort.
Taking place narratively over a twenty-four-hour period, After the Act follows Berlin-residing couple Mia (Laura Petracco) and Sam (Jacob Lefton) and the crippling waves of silence that follow the revelation that Sam cheated on Mia with mutual friend Becca (Jessica Sy). Across its skinny 70-minute-and-change run time, the film’s pacing and general treatment of its characters is tender and reserved… which only makes the copious stretches of not-talking feel that much worse to sit through. It’s akin to watching someone treat a traumatic physical injury, where the wounds being handled so gingerly serves as a persistent reminder that any form of excessive pressure in the wrong place could ignite excruciating pain. At any moment, that silence could be cut by a soul-wrenching scream.
As with any improv exercise, it’s up to the performers to make the pieces fit together, and the central trio all do amazingly well, both in straight performance and within this specific framework.
Lefton imbues Sam’s disastrous decision-making (like an exceptionally piss-poor attempt at a written apology) with an unnerving level of realism to make even the most out-of-pocket moments feel life-like.
Sy, right from her first frame, is a haunting presence, wearing regret and angst as tightly as her yoga clothes.
And as for Petracco, while she’s aided by the film’s expanded scope compared to Goose & Gander, the actress explores a wide breadth of reactions and moods to the core crisis, from well-placed sarcasm to weeping despair to the deceptively-neutral late-lunch opening that kicks the whole thing off.
Through that improvised rawness, the film’s honest exploration of its central questioning of whether sex and love are one-and-the-same, thoughtfully expands on the short’s intimate anxiety (the short originally ended on that initial question, while this feature goes well beyond it) and feels unnervingly close to actually watching a couple deal with this situation. Partly in a “should we be watching this?” kind of way in how private and personal it comes across on-screen, but also in how refreshingly not-sensationalised it is. Even when it gets to Mia’s ‘what’s good for the goose…’ moment and Malekin breaks out some more stylish editing touches, the film’s weaponisation of silence speaks volumes about the importance of open communication in relationships, especially in response to this level of turbulence. It isn’t blindly optimistic about overcoming such a hurdle, nor does it take it as a given that a relationship is incapable of surviving such a betrayal. It’s thornier and more complicated than that, which not only makes the angrier moments evermore wince-inducing, but its gentler, more tender sequences inversely feel that much better to witness because of how much the characters and even the audience had to get through to find them.
After The Act is like watching a gentle breeze brush over an open wound on a heart. Over. And over. And over again. With its tip-toeing pace and quiet mannerisms, it might be tempting to describe this as “meditative”, but that would imply that this is relaxing in any way whatsoever, which it categorically isn’t and actually excels for that very reason. The extent of its genuine emotionality and unflinching resolve to just let everyone sit with their dread and discomfort makes it incredibly tough to watch in its entirety… but those feelings only further activate one’s empathy at the thought of witnessing such a relationship fracture, or even being part of one. It is life, improvised, in all its pain and gradual relief.
