Review of Storytelling (2001) by Derek B — 17 Feb 2010

Two disparate tales presenting contrasting accounts of how fact and fiction relate (or don't). The first, Fiction, is not much more than a 20 minute "short", in which a creative writing student gets much closer to her teacher than she ought to have. Robert Wisdom is suitably enigmatic, uttering maybe 40 words in total, as the professor. Fiction is a bitter little satire in a similar vein to Welcome To The Doll House.

The second story, Non-Fiction, is an account of a film-within-the-film which starts as a fly-on-the-wall documentary on the pressures of being a modern teenager and which evolves into a pastiche of American Beauty (entitled American Scooby, after the under-achieving student of that name who's the focus of the film). Scooby's family are presented in an utterly unflattering light, with the younger brother's thoughtless ignorance and racism leading to a very dark ending indeed. There's one last ironic deadpan joke, then the curtain comes up. Non-Fiction is very very dark, often very funny, utterly chilling, and cruel.

Todd Solondz's films are always worth watching, but never a comfortable experience.