When Henry (Seth Fisher) stumbles into a Wine Bar, mistakenly assuming that it’s a normal bar, he discovers the difference in the bar’s beverage options. At first put off by the fact that the bartender won’t serve him a Pabst Blue Ribbon, he decides to stay because a beautiful woman named Evelyn (Tessa Klein) is sitting at the bar. After he decides to get a red wine, Henry begins to try to talk to Evelyn. Only when the woman writes him a note does he realize that she is mute. At first confused by this, he begins to talk to her about her life and finds out that she’s hiding at the wine bar from her overbearing boyfriend. When her boyfriend shows up at the bar a few minutes later, he must decide if he will attempt to tell him off so that he can get with Evelyn or whether he will choose to help their relationship by being Evelyn’s voice.
Content
Good acting and strong writing make this an enjoyable piece with a minimal number of painfully awkward moments. Both main actor, Seth Fisher, and lead actress, Tessa Klein, do a great job of conveying deep thoughts, with him making use of his character’s awkward rambling to do this and her making use of her expressive features and eyes. The fact that they managed to get William Sadler (The Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, and a slew of other films) to play the bartender was quite impressive. He uses silent looks almost as dynamically as Ms. Klein.
The writing is quite good and snappy, with a nice twist as the main character who has been trying to get with Evelyn must decide if he will continue to try to steal her or be her voice to patch things up with her often oblivious boyfriend. The final ending of the film is satisfying and ties the piece up nicely.
Visual Look
The strongest area for this film, the visual look combines the power of Panasonic’s HVX200 with the P+S Technik Mini35 35mm adapter to yield an extremely film-like look. The shots were well-composed by Michael la Voie, the professional DP that Mr. Remde used for this project.
The lighting was quite good, although personally I found it a bit warm for my taste. While the warm light is very relaxing and often used in wine bars, the fact that it was so pervasive caused the actors to appear to melt into their environments somewhat. Using a cooler backlight would help pop them out a little more.
