Strand Releasing
Marianne Faithfull in "Irina Palm."
UPDATE: I have corrected the title of the documentary "Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File," which I butchered on first publication.]
Spring has sprung full bloom for indie releases, and many small distributors are hopefully sending their boats into the current over the next few weeks. Many will sink immediately, but 'tis a noble effort, O reader. I've already covered Christophe Honoré's strange and bittersweet musical "Love Songs," which opens today in New York, and is already available on-demand on cable TV from IFC In Theaters. Stephanie Zacharek just reviewed Olivier Assayas' latest wallow in Eurotrash obscurantism, "Boarding Gate" (also opening Friday in New York), and I'm grateful, because it ain't quite my cup of absinthe-spiked twice-boiled coffee.
Another film I caught is the American micro-indie "Fade," from writer-director Anthony Stagliano, which just opened at the Pioneer Theater in New York. I wouldn't call "Fade" an entirely or even mostly successful movie, but it's an intriguing blend of elements I can't help admiring. Blending Lynchian nightmare, a lo-fi B-movie aesthetic and the obsessive, claustrophic atmosphere of "Memento" (or, more to the point, of New York indie hero Lodge Kerrigan's "Keane"), "Fade" tries to capture the world of a pathological insomniac (David Connolly) and the wife (Sarah Lassez) who's losing her own grip on reality in a different direction. Much of "Fade" is told without dialogue, and once the characters start talking -- well, you kind of see why. Photography and editing are impressive, and the nerve-jangling modernist score helps breed an atmosphere of dread.