Courtesy Bleecker Street
Movies
As much as director/writer Max Walker-Silverman’s new minimalist romance film, A Love Song, is about the past that shapes us, it’s more about the good things that have not yet come to pass. Not much happens in Walker-Silverman’s world, but then, it’s not a film of flash, but rather a quietly powerful exploration of aging and ingenuity, solitude and fortitude. Simply put, it’s a film about love.
In the middle of nowhere, near a small lake—likely in Colorado, though the film doesn’t specify—a woman named Faye (a career-best Dale Dickey) occupies campsite 7, where she whiles away the hours catching crawdads, listening to the radio and engaging in light reading from her impressive collection of exactly two Audubon Field Guides (one on the birds of the day, one on the stars of the night).
An unknowable number of days passes as nearby residents and campers pop by for things as mundane as dinner invitations or as amusing as wanting to dig up a dead father they buried beneath the campsite back before the oil pump went up, when the view was still nice. Eventually, we learn, Faye has been waiting for someone, a man from her youth with whom she shared a relationship of some kind.
When the man, Lito (Wes Studi) does finally show, his visit is fleeting, but Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” might as well underscore the couple’s moving, heartfelt, disappointing time together. Faye leaves in better emotional shape than when she arrived, though subtly so; Lito leaves only the slightest trace that he was there, though his imprint remains indelible. We never explicitly learn what went down between them as kids, but we do know they both married others who have since died. Is it better, then, to take a chance on love and know for sure, or do you hold onto the thrill of what might have been? Does courage fade over time, or does it morph into a different version altogether? Results may vary from person to person, but Walker-Silverman at least starts the conversation.
It’s fun to catch hometown hero Studi stretching his legs into a simple and humanist role through which he cuts a handsome and sympathetic figure. He’s natural and suave as Lito, even if he stumbles through old guitar licks in an apparent bid to impress Faye. We immediately learn she doesn’t need much, though, and even his awkward attempts at filling the silence don’t go unnoticed. Dickey, however, defines the film and conveys more by nervously tucking her hair behind her ear than lesser actors deliver in full-on speeches worth of dialogue. She is open to personal evolution, perhaps cautiously, but not timid. When played against Studi’s boyish charms and beaming smile, her regression into restrained adolescent giddiness feels like yearning in the best way. Their time together reads like a dream, though an impossible one that seems only sillier by the light of day. Some things aren’t meant to last, it seems. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
10
+Quietly brilliant and relatable to any age
-Nothing to dislike
A Love Song
Directed by Walker-Silverman
With Dickey and Studi
Violet Crown, PG, 81 min.
