Bella

Bella won the audience award at the Toronto Film Festival but I'm not exactly sure why. Told over a day, Jose (Eduardo Verástegui) and Nina (Tammy Blanchard) leave the restaurant where they work. She is fired for being late, and as a result, he walks off the job in protest. They spend the rest of the day contemplating life and sharing stories of themselves with one another. This is a flawed film. Verástegui, hiding behind a blatantly symbolic beard, gives a thin and incredibly unconvincing performance; Manny Perez (as Manny) is worse - his performance is bad. Tammy Blanchard is by far the most accomplished performer here, and it shows; she is much better than this material. Aiming for a style not dissimilar to Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise/Before Sunset films, but much less successful, Alejandro Gomez Monteverde and Patrick Million's screenplay touches on a number of significant issues - abortion, manslaughter, grief - but fails to say anything meaningful about them. Two-thirds of the way through the film, Jose shares a dark secret with Nina and following this revelation, the characters and drama lack plausibility. This stalls the rest of the film; the manipulative ending falls flat, expectantly. Despite Blanchard's performance, some good ideas and solid technical work (the editing and soundtrack are very good) the film feels too much like a first draft - not yet ready for the screen.

6 on the DaveScale.

(dir. Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, USA, 91 mins)