When Affection opens, our protagonist (Jessica Rothe) is facedown on a road. It would appear she’s been in a car wreck. She stands up, stumbles forward and starts to have a seizure, before seeming to be mowed down by a passing car. When she comes to she’s in a strange house she doesn’t recognize. She creeps through its halls until a man (Joseph Cross) emerges and approaches her, an encounter that causes her to, understandably, freak out. But this man explains to her that she is Ellie, he is her husband, and the little girl who has taken exception to her thumping said husband round the head with a poker is her daughter, Alice (Julianna Layne). We soon learn that Ellie has a memory condition that means has she not only forgotten her identity, but she has also apparently cobbled together false ones. But Ellie’s also not sure whether she trusts this man, and his insistence on no phones or visitors only makes her more suspicious as she attempts to find out what is happening.
It’s unclear if this brief synopsis really sells it, but the conceit isn’t bad on paper. The result, meanwhile, is by no means a modern classic, but BT Meza’s debut feature has enough mystery in its opening stages to hold viewers effectively within its world. And this is how the film runs for its opening 40 minutes, slowly and straightforwardly expanding upon this tension of whether Ellie can trust those around her. But then there is a shift after this extended opening stretch that the whole first act has been building to, and it’s that which sinks the rest of the film in irrevocable fashion. That’s not to say what arrives is necessarily a bad twist — its mixture of predictable and nonsensical is quite likeable if anything — but it ultimately leaves the film with absolutely nowhere to go. This pivot reflects a shift of genre and tone that should kick the film into another gear, but instead just seems to leave it dazed.
The issue is that once Affection‘s early tension dissipates, the problems that have been there all along become unavoidable, and get even more pronounced as the film bobs toward its conclusion. For one, there’s a total absence of any visual spark or invention. It’s “film the script” filmmaking in a way you don’t really get so much in the A24-ified indie horror landscape these days, which is refreshing in some ways. But as irritatingly made for the YouTube video-essay community as many of those films are with their in-house style, you’d murder for Meza to find any kind of visual panache here.
A generous reading would be to say that the workmanlike aesthetic style put forth in Affection is an attempt to let the writing and performances shine, but the script gives the actors too little to do with their characters, all three barely afforded a defining trait amongst them. Instead, they are left to function merely as plot conduits existing to push things forward, with all the personality and lived-in humanity of crash test dummies. Real credit should, however go to Rothe, who, despite having a role with little in the way of recognizable character, manages to make Ellie into an engaging, sympathetic presence through sheer physicality alone, a convulsing center that the best of the film revolves around. She remains a performer largely undersold by the films she’s in.
In the end, one is left to regard Affection as a decidely strange film, one that undoes itself so quickly that it makes you think everything you thought went right must have been an illusion. But there is a more substantial film in there, and it’s trying to grapple with grief and loss in the spirit of the ideas-driven tradition of the genre. It’s just a shame that Meza doesn’t stick the landing, his film ultimately playing like a 45-minute mid-length film that makes the unforunate decision to stretch its final five minutes into an enervating 50.
DIRECTOR: BT Meza; CAST: Jessica Rothe, Joseph Cross, Julianna Layne; DISTRIBUTOR: Brainstorm Media; IN THEATERS: May 8; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 30 min.
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