Pascal Payant has become one of indie cinema's most singular figures of late. His slick, eerie style and penchant for perfectly beautiful actors has now become a signature with this sophomore follow-up feature. His first feature, On The Horizon, is what set him on this path in the first place and is available On Demand through Amazon and iTunes. It has many elements of what makes a Pascal Payant film so distinctive: raw emotions that are amplified by self destructive characters who mask an inability to communicate, a pop-based soundtrack and a heavily aesthetic eerie filming style that gives a sense of stepping out of time and looking at a very private story through an artistic framework. This film is not as deliberately glossy as his first attempt, but the emotional tempestuousness is in the same register.
The film involves Abbey Siegworth, amazing unknown actress portraying therapist Ariane Longwood, desperately trying to connect with Logan (Matthew Bilodeau), her son she was forced to surrendered for adoption 17 years ago, and the tsunami wave of scorching pain she is enduring ever since. The story also focuses on the combative relationship between Logan, prickly 17 years old heartthrob, who is rebelious, and his no-nonsense, conventional adoptive mother Kristen (Challen Cates) who is doing her best to ignore the repeated displays of temper by her son and just decided to start therapy for both of them. The therapist has a personal agenda with the boy and Abbey Siegworth plays the role with a combination of world-weariness and blithe indifference, and turns in a tremendous, complicated performance, elevating the film to an A list level. Late in the film, the monologue Ariane delivers-in which she becomes almost insane with despair-is one of the most breathtaking instances of film acting I can remember in years. For Siegworth's acting alone, the film is a must-see. Add to that Bilodeau's own petulant performance, and Payant's knowing eye for character detail, slick camera set-ups and assured direction, and Stolen Season becomes a blissful character study.
Payant knows how to lock into this affective fixation and rides it for as long as he can, and I can assure you it's never exhausting or satirical for viewers. The reason is because Payant has no desire to hold back, and he keeps us on our toes with ever creating plot twists that are never too much or unrealistic, even when flirting with incest. If there's a relationship as toxic as the one between Ariane and Logan, he's going to ignore all pretences and be as honest as he can about it. The art of film is not there to soften the pain of abandonment and cool the bleeding scars between mother and son. Exposing its ugliness and intensity is the very thing that allows for cathartic closure. He exorcises these demons because it is a property of the healing process, and he is as generous as can be about it.
There is a fearlessness to Payant that I admire as a filmmaker. I'll admit that I want him to get famous and to show his films outside of the streaming distribution circuit. He deserves to get into theatres and reach the generation of moviegoers that want something else than studio tentpoles superhero movies.
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