Sundance: What's Happening NEXT?

Festival’s new microbudget indie sidebar is nothing to mumble home about

A A A Comments (3) By Karina Longworth Thursday, Jan 21 2010

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Photo by heather kafka

Lovers of Hate

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There is a film in Sundance that beautifully embodies NEXT's stated mission — and it's in the main competition. Bryan Poyser's Lovers of Hate (yet another Mark Duplass production) is a star-free, bare-bones comedy in which three actors talk and walk around a house for 90 minutes. It's also the most exciting American indie I've seen in a while.

A cracked love triangle between a loser, his ex-wife and his absurdly successful younger brother, Lovers works on multiple levels. It's both an uncomfortable comedy and a voyeur-driven suspense film with genuine gasp cues; it squeezes dick and poop jokes into a cutting examination of lust and envy as twin types of madness. Though it's only Poyser's second feature (following 2004's Indie Spirit–nominated Dear Pillow), there's a sophistication and confidence to his staging and storytelling that make the NEXT films look amateurish. Turns out there is a great low-budget, auteur-driven discovery at Sundance 2010 — it's just not in the section for low-budget discoveries. Better luck NEXT year?

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Larry Gross 01/28/2010 1:55:00 PM

Dear Karina, Thank you for being so accurately enthusiastic about Poyser's Lovers of Hate. As you say, "the sophisticiation and confidence of the staging" are on a whole different level from normal indie product at whatever budget level...How do you bang the drum loudly enough for a film so small, with so few 'exploitable' elements--especially when some substantial numbers of critics miss the thing so completely? keep up the good work, yours, Larry Gross
R.M. 01/28/2010 7:34:00 AM

"Such total lack of cynicism begs a cynical response." Such a cynical statement invites disbelief at it actually being in print.
Julianna_W 01/26/2010 10:43:00 AM

The Freebie is not Humpday, nor is it "less than" Humpday. Instead this engaging, true-to-life, funny (not in a "light" way but in an laugh-so-hard-you-cry way) movie deserves to be evaluated on its own merits. Across the board the actors' performances, including Katie Aselton's as Annie and Dax Shephard's as Darren are amazing, breathing life into the story and these characters, and delivering a raw, emotional honesty. You know this couple. You know their friends. Annie's sister could be my sister. These are folks that I could hang out with on a Friday night. Annie and Darren have a relationship that many would envy. But even wonderful relationships like Annie and Darren's have issues and require work in order to stay happy and committed. Anyone who is married can relate. Audience members kept talking about this thought-provoking story--kept talking as we left the theater, the entire shuttle ride back to town, later that night at the bars, the next day to anyone who would listen, and now in this comment. Everyone that I talked to was touched and took away something different from the story--a true mark of its resonance and universalness. This is my favorite movie about relationships in years, and the best that I saw at Sundance. It deserves wide distribution, so that everyone can go see it. Katie Aselton and Dax Shephard deserve many more roles based on the strength of these performances. The Freebie is a "must see".

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