Deep Love (2013)

Director: Christian Cota
Stars: Erin Greanice and David Waner

This film was a submission to one of the IFP Phoenix film challenges in 2013. Here's an index to my reviews of 2013 submissions.

Given that IFP Beat the Clock is a 48 hour film challenge, I was impressed by the ambition shown by a few of the competing filmmakers. That doesn't mean I was necessarily impressed by their movies, but aspects of them were worthy of note. Deep Love is a good example. It's not even close to being a good film and it has a whole slew of flaws that can't be avoided. The highly derivative story follows a happy couple through a destructive spiral of drug abuse, prostitution and death, bringing absolutely nothing new into the mix. The dialogue is terrible enough that the bad sound in many of the talking scenes is rather welcome because it means we don't have to hear most of it. It starts with a boy bringing home a surprise for his girl. She doesn't recognise the bag of coke for what it is, but knows precisely what to do with it. 'I'm going to trust you,' she says. Only David Waner makes it above mediocre on the acting front, though maybe the actors would have done better work had they been given better material.

However, for a pretty poor film it's a great demo reel for an editor and Tony Perea's work on that front is a rather notable saving grace. He was saddled with the same derivative story as the actors, so he's only able to turn this into a five minute rerun of Requiem for a Dream, just without Jennifer Connolly or her double dildo. However, while the story is little more than a cheap knockoff, Perea's editing is much more reminiscent of the real thing. He only seems to have made a couple of films, but I'm now looking forward to the horror anthology Death by VHS a little more, now that I realise that he did some of the editing on it. As one of three editors on that movie, I wonder if his work will stand out from the others. While Perea is really good here, it's hard to find much else to praise. The story does at least progress consistently from a beginning to an end, which puts this above a few of its competitors, but that's the best I can come up with.