FILM: “In Organic We Trust,” a documentary by Kip Pastor
SYNOPSIS*: Is organic really better, or just a marketing scam?
HE SAYS: You are what you eat. So what’s new?
Not much, it seems, after watching most of Kip Pastor’s “In Organic We Trust.” Pastor casts his film as a journey of personal discovery — a device that comes off contrived as a student film project. Ostensibly the film is about the use and abuse of the word “organic,” but the real point Pastor wants to make is how dysfunctional and disease-ridden our industrial food system has become.
Great. But it’s not as if we’re strangers to this issue. Most of the information presented in the film has been circulating around the Mission in various media for years. “In Organic We Trust” is a simple, and at points simplistic, rehash.
Refresher courses have their value, though. True, I walked out of the film before it ended, but unlike last night, I passed up a slice of Arinell’s pizza.
Repeats Thursday 2/23 at 7:15 p.m.
FILM: “Girlfriend,” by Justin Lerner
SYNOPSIS: Evan is a young man with Down syndrome who lives with his mother in a poor, working-class town hit hard by the recent economic recession. When he unexpectedly comes into a large amount of money, Evan uses it to romantically pursue Candy, a girl from town whom he has loved since high school.
HE SAYS: “Girlfriend” is a simple story of unrequited (but not, ostensibly, unconsummated) love, with one major twist: the would-be boyfriend has Down syndrome. His unlikely relationship with a single mom on the edge of eviction is the focus of the film.
Emotions could have gone overboard on numerous occasions, but director Justin Lerner restrains himself, minimizes the schmaltz, and hits the right note for this kind of story. He is helped immensely by the cast, especially Evan Sneider, who brilliantly exposes the inner life of a person with Down syndrome; Shannon Woodward, who as Candy finds the honest and innocent Evan incomprehensible; and Amanda Plummer, who plays Evan’s mother to a frazzled perfection.
My only objection is that the restraint Lerner demonstrates in his script loosens up in the shooting. More than once Lerner lets his eye linger far too long on an image, draining tension while adding nothing to our understanding or appreciation of the scene. And it slows down the pacing of the film, which already too slow.
SHE SAYS: It’s clear from Candy’s (Shannon Woodward) life that it’s hard to find a good man in the small, unnamed town where everyone we see is poor but lives in a fairly bucolic setting. Evan (Evan Sneider) is a really good person who has Down syndrome but proves to be one of the steadier men in town. There are some great performances — Woodward, Sneider and Amanda Plummer, who plays Evan’s mother — and the story line works. It could, however, be tighter, with a slightly less laconic pace.
*These are copy-and-paste jobs from the SF Indiefest website, edited for brevity, etc. SF IndieFest runs Feb. 9 to Feb. 23. Check here for the schedule.