Claire in Motion (2017)

Do not ignore the hyperbolic "If you can think of THE worst movie imaginable as a mole hill, this is Mt. Everest" - cuz, you know what, for some folks this really isn't "a good movie". But with all due respect, I think those looking for resolution are really missing the point. No, this is not so much a 'mystery' as it is a study of human nature and, well, life itself. Sometimes we ARE left without answers (although, in this case, it's pretty clear to me that Paul likely disappeared to start a new life, leaving a LOT of loose ends behind). What I find really astonishing is that this was written and directed by two WOMEN! Reason? The sentiment of I don't feel like I'm appreciated, let alone loved, was what Paul felt, and he's a guy! Now, of course, they could just be flipping the husband/wife thing around, and perhaps a WOMAN disappearing would be perhaps less believable unless her safety or that of her children are at stake. I can honestly say that there have been times when I feel like pulling a stunt like that. We know that he didn't cheat on his wife - that'd be too cliched. But if I have to find fault with the plot, it is the failure to fully establish Paul's desire to disappear like that - that little video clip where he says she's not looking at him doesn't carry with it that broad a shoulder. Still, I enjoyed this as a thought-provoking movie, and I'd watch a thousand of these, flaws and all, over watching some mindless special-effect, 'clever dialogue' crap that Hollywood is habitually churning out of its butt hole on a regular basis - those and the 'sequels' and remakes. GAG!

This movie reminds me of one of the abstract, trying-too-hard English essays we used to have to read in college. It requires the viewer to make most of the connections on your own. The plot is dull and slow, and I didn't recognize the climax when I watched it, nor can I find it looking back- the movie was one long trudge of boredom. The characters (especially the woman who licks her hand like a cat, and the man with a clown car) seem like accidental inclusions, and are never fully developed.However, I admit that the movie has the pretentious, "deep" ambience of a film that's meant to be full of meaning, if only you look hard enough. Unfortunately, unlike how I feel about great English classics, I found myself never wanting to think about the movie hard enough to connect the dots. The characters and the plot were too flat for me to care. If you're someone who likes slow movies that you have to think a lot about, you might like this one.

FILM: Claire in Motion DIRECTORS: Annie J. Howell, Lisa Robinson RATING: 3/10This film follows Claire and her son in the month after Claire's husband goes missing. Judging from the performance by lead actress Betsy Brandt though, you'd believe Claire never actually met the man as she has so little invested in his disappearance. With its deadly pace and quiet landscape, this film never quite picks up enough steam to level a feeling of honesty about the missing, and possibly dead, husband. Instead the co-writing, co-directing team get so distracted with a relatively uninteresting wife/mistress rivalry between Claire and her husband's colleague, that this turns into another story of an emotionally unavailable wife pitted against a younger woman who feels herself a bit too much. The husband's disappearance, it ultimately seems, is an absurd catalyst for a cliché set of circumstances. Deemed so unimportant by the writers in fact (SPOILER ALERT), the husband's disappearance is never even solved. With an underwhelming emotional landscape and a maddeningly unsatisfying ending, this film manages to bring very little to the table.

If you're one of those who need your movie's to be wrapped up nice and neat and complete with a little bow at their conclusion, with all the loose ends securely tied tight, and each and every question fully answered, then "Claire in Motion" is definitely not the flick for you, my friend.However, if you appreciate a provocative story unfolding layer upon layer, allowing the viewer to absorb and assess what they believe may be happening as the chronicle progresses, and then to subjectively determine on their own what may or may not have happened in the end, then I can not recommend "Claire in Motion" more highly to you.Co-Writers and Directors Annie J. Howell and Lisa Robinson have fashioned an impressively unconventional and beguiling mystery. Their narrative reaches that uncommon emotional place of being both fascinating and unnerving, often times even outright uncomfortable, in terms of how we are moved to feel in our experience as an audience.Betsy Brandt, so extraordinary as Marie Schrader in the eternally iconic "Breaking Bad", is once again superb here as Claire. Brandt gives us a multifarious character whose faith in practically everything in her seemingly idyllic life is joltingly shattered when she comes to learn how she had completely failed to recognize she was systematically losing that which she holds most dear. Claire struggles to remain strong and hold out hope in the face of an increasingly devastating reality which threatens to crush her very soul into shards of regret. Brandt's embodiment of a woman living an endless nightmare day after day after wrenchingly draining day is a powerfully genuine portrayal. It is a mesmeric and stirring personification which, left to a lesser actress, would have almost assuredly registered as merely moribund and morose. Brandt imbues Claire with a far more fully-dimensional sensibility than that which we may typically expect as she creates an unusually complex rendering. Her performance borders on, if it doesn't launch fully into, brilliance.Zev Haworth, appearing in his first feature film, is Claire's adolescent son, Connor. He is a quiet boy, but we sense early on that there is a lot going on inside this young man which he refuses to release, even to his mother. Connor's counselor-recommended letter to his dad near the end of "Claire in Motion" is at once heartfelt and heart destroying. Haworth is a natural wonder. Watch for him in the years to come.And can we get some love for veteran supporting player Anna Margaret Hollyman ("White Reindeer") already? Can we manage to do this, all you Hollywood string-pullers out there? Hollyman's strange yet stunning depiction of the other woman Allison is not only an important role in "Claire", it is a critical component. For it is Allison who provides the voice, as well as the conscience, for the missing husband Paul. We would have never come to at least in part understand Paul if not for this curiously enigmatic art school grad student revealing to us some manner of the "why for" behind a man's bafflingly bizarre behavior. Hollyman's Allison changes as the situation dictates, and her versatility and poignance is as striking as it is searing.Howell and Robinson team in tantalizing tandem with Cinematographer Andreas Burgess's irregular scene framing and unorthodox camera angles and Xander Duell's cosmically disquieting musical score. Their inspired work comes together seamlessly to craft a consistent and entirely appropriate vibe of disorienting otherworldliness which mimics the near-hallucinatory state of being we watch Claire slowly descend into.Ultimately, and in keeping with the dynamic implicit in it's title, "Claire in Motion" is an unflinching examination of the excruciatingly painful process of "moving on" in the wake of unbearable loss, cruelly compounded in this case by the not conclusively knowing if your loved one is truly lost at all.At least in the physical interpretation of the word.******Incidentally, I do not work for a Motion Picture Studio, nor have I ever. I genuinely like the movie. To each his own...kinna makes this ol' world go 'round, don't it? ;]