Review of Cold Weather (2010) by Parker M — 24 Jun 2011

2.5 Stars out of 4.

Remember Baghead and Cyrus? Well, Cold Weather is just another addition to the twenty-first century mumblecore, where we study twenty-somethings as they live a pointless existence. Director Aaron Katz wants to rearrange the puzzle pieces of the mystery genre in this tiny little genre experiment, one that may have watched Fargo twenty-something times too many.

The characters act about as literal as the title. The protagonist is the bashful Doug (Cris Lankenau) who has moved to Portland, Oregon to live with his sister Gail (Trieste Kelly Dunn). Doug, a studier of forensic science, gets a job at an ice factory where he befriends Carlos (Raul Castillo) and they share an interest in Sherlock Holmes. Meanwhile Doug's ex-girlfriend Rachel (Robyn Rikoon) has stopped by for a visit, but there is no tension in sight. The two just kind of be merry in their own seemingly quiet, lonely introverted world. These are virtually the only human characters in the film, with the exception of a cowboy who had this uncanny, arbitrary presence like the cowboy from Mulholland Drive.

Things perhaps heat up a little when Rachel goes missing from her hotel. The other three embark on their own Sherlock Holmes charade, and Doug even purchases a pipe, which he unwittingly chews like a brooding shamus. Day turns to night and the three endure on an adventure, a mysterious one, that you cannot help but think they have needed for a long time. The story unravels to a quiet payoff, one with a car chase involving simply one car. The ending perhaps implies that - well - that sometimes all mystery stories are constant episodes of little red herrings.

If you are unfamiliar with mumblecore it was coined by a sound editor named Eric Masunaga who created this new wave of film that threw away the script, hired actors blindly, and just kind of told without the drama. Cold Weather is not dramatic, in fact it wants us to rethink the patterns of mysteries and that clues are not always what's under the magnifying glass.

At the end of the day, I'm not exactly sure what this movie wants from me. To laugh, to be shocked, or to hold the magnifying glass myself. It lacks a direction, but its world is tiny and uncanny in that it invites you in and then strangles you with minor touches of suspense. I don't mind modesty, but Cold Weather is so modest I might call it timid.

It keeps us on the outside, which is perhaps the untapped craft of mumblecore. Some may call it "boring" but anyone who appreciates build up (and this movie has 40 minutes of that) will feel moments of affection. This is about characters who live mundane lives and seek something extraordinary in little episodes of chaos. I prefer the new, very similar Canadian work Good Neighbours, about quiet lives exposed to ploys and the simple art of murder. For me, Cold Weather is - in every way - eerily mundane. What did Sherlock say? Elementary, my dear Watson...