Review of Hide Your Smiling Faces (2014) by I-Onell S — 01 Aug 2014

Told in shorts, t-shirts and pain filled eyes, Daniel Patrick Carbone's Hide Your Smiling Faces is a brooding coming-of-age tale pulsing with threat and an unalloyed sense of wonderment. A long lazy summer stretches out in front of brothers Tommy (Ryan Jones) and Eric (Nathan Varnson) with nothing to do but explore rural New Jersey, shoot BB guns and wrestle with their friends - a world without adults or authority. But the discovery of a loaded gun, the tragic death of a friend and the near-psychotic presence of the dead boy's father shatters their carefree holiday, forcing them to confront emotions far beyond their tender years and understanding.

Setting its pace early with an opening shot of a wild snake slowly writhing as it devours its prey, the drama crawls through the American wilderness with the speed of imperceptibly moving clouds and swaying branches. Far from an annoyance, this meditative reflection on landscape and imagery is the film's strongest hand. The plot is ever-present but is never used to drive the boys through their lives: their discoveries and decisions appear as gradually as the movement of the nature around them. It's a story not so much told, as presented in imagery, reliant on our own curiosity to mimic that of the young explorers in drawing us deeper into the woods.

The rural setting teems with life, greenery and wild creatures - but it is the stench of death that clings to their journey most strongly, animal carcasses and gravestones set against young flesh and sprightly lizards. Remaining in the shadow of the monolithic viaduct that claimed their friend's life the spectre of mortality is thrust upon them all before their time.

"No, the lord didn't want him to die. But he did die.".

These poetics and the ambient air of threat are satisfying up to a point but, lacking the tightly focused storytelling of Jeff Nichols' Mud (2012) or the wild abandon of Kings of Summer (2013), there is never quite enough meat on the bone. It is a film that requires its audience to fill in the majority of its blanks, both in terms of plot and emotion, as it's never descriptive in either. Unfortunately it lacks an emotional anchor at its core, often seeming like a collaged set of parts with no firm hold on its own direction or purpose. The argument may be that this is the intrinsic message of a film about boys out of their emotional depth, but this fails to hold water due to its wilful opacity and apparent self-awareness.

Undeniably visually arresting, and carrying an evocative aura of menace, but what does Hide Your Smiling Faces really say? It holds itself with a solemn profundity, dripping with symbolics, but any real weight evaporates as the credits roll. Nevertheless, the immersive dreamlike experience and the sheer quality of the production and performances still make this a striking debut feature of real promise from Carbone.