Mumblecore rears its ugly head (and I do mean ugly) once again on Reel 13 with TEAM PICTURE, which proves just how interchangeable the films within this emerging genre tend to be. Just change the city (here, it's Memphis, TN) and the protagonist and then use the same formula – drifting twentysomething deals with a potential romance and a lack of career or direction. While the plight of the aimless does have implicit dramatic tendencies, the trend is getting to be disturbingly repetitive, especially given how TEAM PICTURE takes the aimlessness to an extreme, mirroring the character's meandering with its narrative structure. At least a film like QUIET CITY had an objective – to find the friend that the girl was supposed to meet. TEAM PICTURE, conversely, is as lost as its main character.
As far as that protagonist is concerned, director/star Kentucker Audley (Kentucker?) seems perpetually high (as in, on drugs) and the film seems to hope that we would mistake his quirk for depth. David, as played by Audley, eventually becomes an impossible character to root for. His inability to communicate with people in a normal way or perhaps more importantly, to the audience, is initially interesting, but it evolves into being extremely frustrating. I felt myself giving up on him three-quarters of the way through the sixty-minute main narrative and that is a sign of death for any narrative. Furthermore, I get the sense that Audley, like many of his mumblecore counterparts, is not acting so much as he is playing himself with a different name. In doing so, however, he fails to communicate the dimensions of his character/himself that would give us enough of a window into his psyche that would allow us to care
This leads me to another issue I have with the mumblecore movement that Team Picture epitomizes. While the genre is supposed to more representative of reality than most narrative films, this becomes a stylization in and of itself that many films of the genre take to an unnecessary extreme, which makes them less realistic than they think, just on the other side of the spectrum. In other words, the supposed "realism" is forced. Conversations are rarely as random as they are here and in other films of its kind. The discussions about fingernails and flowers that take place in this movie are just as crafted as regular dialogue, but here with the intention of seemingly like it wasn't as contrived. But, in my mind, they are overcompensating. I'll take a well-shaped scene that advances the narrative any day over a wandering conversation about something uninteresting. Along the same lines, technical snafus like boom shadows and breaking the 180-degree rule aren't cool or rich. It's just sloppy.
I don't even know what to say about the epilogue to TEAM PICTURE, entitled GINGER SAND. After TEAM PICTURE ends suddenly after only an hour, GINGER SAND begins and seems to take place much later, reuniting two of the main characters from the main film, but it also features two characters that Audley doesn't bother to introduce or explain. Once again, he rudely eschews the need for traditional exposition, probably as some form of rebellion against "Hollywood storytelling". The ensuing ten minutes of GINGER SAND has absolutely nothing to do with the story of TEAM PICTURE and gives us no insight as to where David is in his life, what he is doing with his time, etc. All it manages to do is convey that his new relationship isn't working out, even though we just met this new girlfriend and have no sense of their history. So why should we care? And that goes for TEAM PICTURE as well.
(For more information on this or any other Reel 13 film, check out their website at www.reel13.org)