MFF2007: Frownland

Directed by Ronald Bronstein

With Dore Mann, Mary Wall, Paul Grimstad, David Sandholm

Website at www.frownlandinc.com

Keith Sontag doesn’t have a lot of friends. The people he’s closest to in this world slam doors in his face — and after spending a few minutes with him, you’ll see why. Keith’s grunts, stammers, and out-of-nowhere apologies turn routine interactions into grueling entanglements. As tension with his roommate and a teenaged female friend escalate over a several-day period, Frownland builds to a fever-pitch of psychological tension. (from the filmfest-guide)

Frownland was the first film we saw on Friday, and wow… what a great film that was. The classic dramaturgical line of a film-story would normally let a character evolve and change throughout the course of the story. A character goes through a series of perhaps adventurous events, and at the end of the film you will find him or her in a better or worse concluding spot. Not so in Frownland: None of the people will find a better spot or become a better person—everybody is a loser, everybody is destined to fail.

I may be wrong, but I felt like it was me who was going through a series of emotional changes…and that I, and not the characters in the film, was following that dramaturgical line instead. The different situations made me feel very sorry for Keith Sontag at times, wishing people would treat him better and that he would overcome his communicative disadvantages. At other times I felt like the other people around him, perhaps irritated or annoyed sometimes. At times I could be angry about his roommate and the way he treated Keith, at other times I could feel sorry for his roommate, being a loser with his own disadvantages himself.

Although it was just a story, I was very impressed by its realism about life, people and loneliness. They reminded me of people I knew myself before…the environment and surroundings reminded me of places I hung out in before… and the situations appeared very familiar to me, too. It could have been a slice of my own or some of my friends’ lives… a film that could almost work as a documentary.

Frownland was uncomfortable and unpleasant. It was ugly and should have felt depressing and not funny at all, but you couldn’t help and laugh at how ugly, horrible and embarrassing the situations were. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned from this film in that no matter how ridiculously bad life may sometimes get, it will be better to laugh about and with it than taking things too seriously and letting it get to you.

If you share my taste and enjoyed films like Blaine Thurier’s Male Fantasy (“I am god. I create this reality”) which was presented at the Maryland Film Festival in 2005, or Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ’66 or The Brown Bunny I am sure you will love Frown-“I really appreciate it”-land, too. It definitely was one of my festival favorites this year!