Whidbey Island stages erotic update of Bergman psychological ’60s classic.
Local filmmaker (and Stranger genius-in-residence) Charles Mudede invited me over to his apartment this weekend to watch a “crazy French film.” Mudede was surprised to discover, though, that the film was a documentary about the crazy French film not the crazy French film itself.
Neither one of us was up for watching a movie about a movie. Luckily, Mudede had a rough cut lying around his apt. of an unreleased local film that’s scheduled to play at January’s Slamdance Film Festival in Park City (an alternative for films that don’t make Sundance).
The movie, Without, was shot on Whidbey Island by indie filmmaker Mark Jackson.
The only promo blurb I can find says this:
On a remote wooded island, a young woman becomes caretaker to an old man in a vegetative state. Her isolated routine devolves into a struggle with sexuality, guilt and loss.
That’s true, but more than that it’s like Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Instead of Vietnam, the theater, and psychiatry, though, Jackson subs in wifi, voyeurism, and yoga while keeping Bergman’s hallucinations and cloudy eroticism in the mix.
Also, instead of Bibi Anderson, Without has Joslyn Jensen.
Who?
I’ll say this: Ms. Jensen can turn watching the fishing channel, changing an old man’s Depends, and staring out the window at a deer into sexy powerful cinema.
