A
multi-media show by Shelley Farmer and Alex Hare creates
a dialogue between theater and independent filmmaking, borrowing its style from
French New Wave.
An awkward production assistant Agness (Erin Healani Chung) dressed in all black, makes
her way in front of the audience and delivers the usual theater announcements
about the fire exits and cell phones. Her badly hidden nervousness and
excitement puzzle me for a moment. Is this for real? Or have the You Can’t Kiss a French Movie already
began? This experimental play by Shelley Farmer and
Alex Hare is designed like a Russian nesting doll: it’s a movie shot on a
theater stage, and is inspired by French New Wave films.
 |
| Shelley Farmer and Greg Balla in You Can’t Kiss a French Movie. Photo by photo by Emma Wainwright. |
Lola (Shelley Farmer) is a cabaret
singer in love with Michel (Greg Balla). Introduced to us
through the camera in the hands of the Cameraman/Director (Adam Weppler), they first appear offstage behind the curtain and on
the screen in front of us. Cinephilia has a voyeuristic nature, which the director Alex Hare cleverly
emphasizes by staging some of the scenes in the spaces fully or partially
obscured from the audience and faithfully streaming everything on the big
screen. But is the camera gaze objective or objectifying?
The cinematic beauty is the play’s strongest
feature. Even though the few elements of the sets, designed by An-Lin Dauber, are right before
our eyes, they come alive on screen anew, touched by movie magic. Lighting design by Jennifer Fok and camera work by Adam Weppler make the picture on the big screen
irresistibly delicious.
The
only movie scene that is pre-filmed as opposed to live-streamed takes place on
a train platform on a beautiful, snowy day. Farmer and Balla are recording a voiceover for it. The slight
discrepancy between the lip movement and actor’s voices doesn’t allow us to
slip into somnambulistic film-watching mode. This encourages watching and
listening critically. But the beautiful black-and-white image draws us in,
making a strong argument for the artistic craft that filmmaking requires. Having the noble intention behind the
beautiful picture is perhaps more important, but You
Can’t Kiss a French Movie doesn’t
make a very strong argument in the ideological department.
However,
the show is a success in facilitating the dialogue between theater and film. In
most multi-media productions, video projections are merely a tool, a window to
a different time (Dodin’s Cherry Orchrd,
where home films illustrate how happy the life once was), space (Van Hove’s Kings, where the entire labyrinth of
backstage is only visible through the live-stream) or the depths of human soul
in the actor’s close-up (Thomas Ostermeier’s Richard III, where the power of final monologue is doubled by the
blown up video of Richard’s face).
You Can’t Kiss a French Movie, being a
theater show about movie making, takes the capabilities of live-streaming even
further in the scenes where the interaction between the actors and the
projection are simultaneously unfolding next to each other. The intimacy of
HERE’s downstairs theater allows for the similar reality-to-screen scale ratio,
which essentially means that you see the same scene twice in the mirror-like
effect. Except that the reflection is subjective and represents the vision of a
person behind the camera. This is where the show makes its strongest argument
even before any of the words of rebelling feminism are spoken.
__________
You Can’t Kiss a French
Movie played at HERE, 145 6th Ave, Manhattan,
on December 15-17, 2017. The running time is 70 minutes with no
intermission.
You Can’t Kiss a French
Movie is
by Shelley Farmer and
Alex Hare. Directed by Alex Hare.
Produced
by Madeleine Goldsmith. Set
and costume design is by An-Lin Dauber. Lighting
design is by Jennifer Fok. Original
Music is by Michael Gildin.
Sound Design is by Gabriel Lozada. Film Consultation is by John Zhao.
The
cast is Shelley Farmer, Greg Balla, Erin Healani Chung, and Adam Weppler
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