LOST MOMENTS // A FILM REVIEW OF “GAZER”
BY MATEO MORENO
From the opening moments of GAZER, the new self-financed debut from Ariella Mastroianni and Ryan J. Sloan, it immediately screamed late 90’s indie film to me. And I mean that in the best of way. The 1990’s was the beginning of the indie-boom, the beginning of Sundance and when filmmakers realized that if a studio wouldn’t hire them, they could make it their damn selves. Mastroianni and Sloane do exactly that here and with wonderfully brooding results. With shades of David Cronenberg lurking at every corner and the feeling of isolation and doom surrounding its main character throughout, the results of Gazer are often quite hypnotic. Mastroianni plays Frankie, a woman who lives a solitary life. As the film begins, she’s working at a gas station and loses track of time by staring into windows, not noticing the customers that have driven up and need gas. Her “daydreaming” ends up costing her the job and as she heads back to her place, we learn that she suffers from dyschronometria, a condition characterized by the inability to accurately estimate or track the passage of time. She makes cassette tape recordings to help her keep track of time, to help guide her through the days and piece together the missing fragments. The voiceovers of these recordings also help us, the audience, keep track of Frankie. Her illness has separated her from the rest of the world, made her an island of herself.
She does have a daughter (Emma Pearson), but she lives with her grandmother (Marianne Goodell) who doesn’t want Frankie to spend too much time with her own flesh and blood. Frankie is trying to save enough money to get custody back but her bouncing from job to job isn’t helping that struggle. That is, until a woman named Paige (Renee Gagner) offers her a deal: If Frankie will break into her apartment, grab her car keys and drive it off to a drop off spot, she’ll give her $3,000. In addition to this mysterious (and definitely shady) offer, Frankie has fragmented memories of a gun, blood on hands and a cabin. She’s not sure what it is, but it very well might have something to do with her husband’s death, ruled a suicide but she starts to fear that perhaps it wasn’t that at all. What she does know is that Paige is in trouble. She saw her running away from an apartment building, a woman in crisis. Or at least that’s what she thinks that she saw, and she can both help her and take care of her own needs. But she is her own unreliable narrator, and as she begins to try and help both herself and Paige, time keeps slipping away. And her mystery keeps getting deeper.
Feeling both like an indie throwback and refreshingly original, Gazer is a gem of a film. It’s shot in a way that’s meant to disorient you, push you off your axis, all in gloriously grainy 16mm. Ariella Mastroianni is striking as Frankie and her script, which she co-wrote with Ryan J. Sloan and shot on weekends over the course of two and a half years, is a mind bending twister. It’s a fascinating bread crumb trail that scatters all the pieces before putting them back together again to show us the way. Mastroianni and Sloan do an excellent job with the pacing and although it bleeds in its influences, it never copies them and sheds its own originality all over the screen. It’s a film you’ll want to watch twice, not because you have to so you can “get it,” but because you’ll want to dig in that much more. It’s dark and moody, haunting and troubling. It’s a true indie standout, one that feels like it was made by two true creative minds without the red tape of a studio. Because it was. And thank God for that.
GRADE: A
WRITTEN BY Ryan J. Sloan, Ariella Mastroianni DIRECTED BY Ryan J. Sloan STARRING Ariella Mastroianni, Marcia Debonis, Renee Gagner, Jack Alberts, Tommy Kang NOW IN SELECTED THEATRES.