Review of I Melt with You (2011) by Cailin T — 29 Nov 2011

Admittedly, Iâ(TM)m a little back and forth on this film. Parts of it were beautiful, haunting, and melancholy. Other parts seemed a little forced, a little flat, a little awkward. Maybe this was intentional - Iâ(TM)m not sure. Either way, I Melt With You lingers.

Beginning with one of the best lead-ups and title sequences Iâ(TM)ve ever seen in a film, the text hits you in the face like a freight train, bold and stark and vivid. I Melt With You - even the title itself speaks poetry, as does the entire film as a whole.

The movie starts out like a Woody Allen flick on acid - close steady shots and candid conversation. It is close, very intimate, and very real, but with a deep and dangerously dark tinge streaked across every frame. This darkness is present from the first frame, and lingers in every shot of the film, ever looming as it builds.

The story takes us through a crazy week-long trip that four middle-aged friends take together, full of binge drinking, cocaine-snorting, pill-popping catharsis. We quickly learn just enough of these four friends to find out how fucked up they are, how much they all hate their lives, and how much theyâ(TM)re dying to escape together to a better place. Ultimately, itâ(TM)s easier to face their problems together than alone.

Weâ(TM)re expecting your average, run-of-the-mill mid-life-crisis-finding-yourself type of film, but I Melt With You is nothing of the sort. Itâ(TM)s scary and twisted and creepy and eerie and unreal and utterly turbulent. Itâ(TM)s horrifying and disturbing and violent. Itâ(TM)s poetic and beautiful and metaphoric.

I canâ(TM)t get into much plot detail without giving too much away, but Iâ(TM)ll say that I Melt With You is very much a film about isolation, about loneliness, about finding a way out of lifeâ(TM)s messes, about facing our deepest fears and our deepest regrets, and about connecting with our peers to help us get through it. Except that I Melt With You take this premise, and turns it upside down. It lights it on fire. It dips it in frosty toxicity. It burns it and melts it and turns it into something very different, something bold and startling and scary.

For me, this film shines in three specific areas. One is the tone, which Iâ(TM)ve already covered. Every moment of this film is specific - from the blocking to the lighting to the set design and the dialogue - each scene intended to slowly build an atmosphere of macabre hopelessness. And you feel it, you feel it seeping under your skin and into your pores and down your throat and beneath your fingernails. You feel it from the very beginning.

Second, the acting. Each of the four friends are so believable in their roles, so pathetic and so alone and so fucked up. Jeremy Piven in particular, in my opinion, really brought a lot out for this role. His performance was haunting and beautiful and so very real to me. His words left chills behind, spoken with such despondence that you can almost see it there, dripping off screen.

Finally, the sound design. The tone, the darkness, is completely set in motion by the sounds of this is film, perfectly engineered and leveled. The sounds pull in and out, changing in volume and tone so notably, yet seamlessly, that everything feels that much more erratic and undeniably eerie throughout. You hear so much of the darkness before you see it, and that build up begins to get under your skin.

Despite these obvious triumphs, this film had some obvious short-comings as well. There were some over-long scenes, over-drawn and long-winded and wordy, that needed desperately to be tightened. The lengthiness often got in the way of the building tension, and I found myself temporarily pulled out of the building emotion as I wondered how long a particular conversation would take place. And then there were some plot-related errors, which I canâ(TM)t really elaborate on and still keep this spoiler-free, but the film fell apart a little at the end, for me, as a new female character, a police officer, was introduced in the mix of things. Her role was supposed to contrast the four men of the story, I think, but I found her acting to be uninspiring and her character as a whole continually pulled me out of the story.

Despite these shortcomings, I Melt With You is certainly something special. It may be utterly disturbing, with a final message that I still canâ(TM)t quite grasp onto, but thatâ(TM)s part of itâ(TM)s appeal. I think weâ(TM)re supposed to be left with that uncomfortable and icky feeling that I have in the pit of my stomach, wondering if, maybe, these men were better off in the end. But I think that notion really isnâ(TM)t of consequence, because I think this film is supposed to be taken as completely metaphoric rather than literal. When the world begins to be too much, sometimes the help of a friend is the only way you can escape. Sometimes you need the friend to take you there. And despite how dismal and bleak this metaphor is it (again, trying to to spoil anything here), itâ(TM)s somehow a beautiful one too.

No matter if this film horrifies you, makes you want to turn it off after 10 minutes and never think about it again, or if it fascinates you and makes you want to sink your teeth completely into it, I Melt With You was certainly made with care and creativity.

Everything here is dying and painted grey, the lights switched off and decay seeping in. You may not like what you see, but you canâ(TM)t deny that somehow, itâ(TM)s beautiful in its bleakness.