A bored Florida couple with a gun found by the side of the road try to escape the ennui of their daily lives and flee to the American nowhere. One of the most important contemporary filmmakers, Kelly Reichardt describes her film as a "road movie without the road, a love story without the love, and a crime story without the crime."
Cozy, a bored housewife, languishes in Florida, whose hot sun, endless roads and sea suggest the possibility of a more exciting life. Lee, a sad guy, living with his grandmother, finds a gun related to a crime being investigated by Cozy’s father. Lee and Cozy meet in a bar and decide to try break into his friend’s house to swim in the pool. When the homeowner comes out, the gun goes off and thinking they have killed him, they go on the run.
One of the most important female directors in contemporary cinema, Kelly Reichardt started her career by deconstructing the road movie and the image of criminal lovers—one of the staples of American cinema, central to films ranging from Terrence Malick’s Badlands to Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. In Reichardt’s film, the seductive myth of Hollywood’s love stories with guns is balanced by common, unimpressive landscapes, the stuffiness and routines of provincial America and a Chekhov-esque drama of small, invisible people who try but cannot run away from their mundane life.
11 x 14
Director Kelly Reichardt.
UK, 1994, 76 minutes.
16+
