Redland Review

Comments (0) By Karina Longworth Thursday, Mar 10 2011

The dark, hallucinatory fable Redland, a 2009 film festival lapper just now receiving a limited release, begins and climaxes with two of the most audacious sex-meets-death set pieces in recent indie-movie memory. What's even more daring: First-time director Asiel Norton decided to shoot this starless, elliptical, defiantly mythic feature on 35mm film, with heavy filtration and apparently nothing but light that would be natural to its setting, the shanty of a dirt-poor family in Depression-era rural Northern California. The resulting look — sometimes barely emerging from the celluloid grain, often toned in sepia or moonlight blue — resembles a flickering, psychedelic daguerreotype; it's unlike anything I've ever seen before.

Related Content

More About

A disorienting daze of perspectives, with a soundtrack drone often subbing for dialogue, Redland sometimes seems to constitute the merged daydreams and ever-tenuous reality of Mary-Ann (Lucy Adden), a naïve young waif attempting to hide an affair from her family as starvation and isolation drive them all closer to madness and the brink of death.

When Mary-Ann's secret boyfriend (Toben Seymour) joins her father and brother on a last-ditch hunt for food, Norton scrambles the POV even further: One character's fantasies become another's paranoid visions within a collective nightmare. The depraved, desperation-trumps-morality, circle-of-life denouement is foreshadowed a little too heavily from the beginning, but with its hypnotic, singular aesthetic, Redland still casts a spell that's hard to shake. 

Related Content

Check out this week's featured ad for Services
More Ads >>
 
My Voice Nation Help
1 comments
  Livefyre
Newest | Oldest
nictate
nictate

Sounds absolutely amazing. You had me at "daguerreotype."

 
VOICE Daily Deals

Now Showing

Find capsule reviews, showtimes & tickets for all films in town.

Powered By VOICE Places

Slideshows

Join My Voice Nation for free stuff, film info & more!

Now Trending

Box Office

  1. Star Trek Into Darkness, 70.2 mil, 83.7 mil
  2. Iron Man 3, 35.8 mil, 337.7 mil
  3. The Great Gatsby, 23.9 mil, 90.7 mil
  4. Pain & Gain, 3.2 mil, 46.7 mil
  5. The Croods, 3.0 mil, 177.0 mil
  6. 42, 2.8 mil, 88.8 mil
  7. Oblivion, 2.3 mil, 85.6 mil
  8. Mud, 2.2 mil, 11.7 mil
  9. Peeples, 2.2 mil, 7.9 mil
  10. The Big Wedding, 1.2 mil, 20.3 mil
Movie Title, Weekly Earnings, Total Earnings

Movie Trailers

More News Stories >
©2013 LA Weekly, LP, All rights reserved.
Browse Voice Nation
  • Voice Places Los Angeles

    Voice Places

    Find everything you're looking for in your city

  • Happy Hour App

    Happy Hour App

    Find the best happy hour deals in your city

  • Daily Deals

    Daily Deals

    Get today's exclusive deals at savings of anywhere from 50-90%

  • Best Of

    Best Of...

    Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city