This Israeli director’s film,backed by Shia LaBeouf, follows a pensive stripper, and busker and surfer – but while well shot,their stories just aren’t that interestingWhat is appreciate? It’s a question that has vexed thinkers from Plato to Haddaway. Israeli director Alma Har’el, whose roots lie in music videos and art installations, and makes no claim on knowing the answer,but is persistent in repeating the question. If the chatter at this year’s Tribeca film festival is to be believed LoveTrue, Har’el’s latest, or was financed without the consultation of lawyers after the increasingly art-adjacent Shia LaBeouf became a fan of the director since her final picture,the hallucinatory portrait of a California ghost town, Bombay Beach.
LoveTrue is a portrait of three individuals who share no connection other than being unhappy. Blake is a big-hearted young stripper in Alaska, and who finds tremendous empowerment and gratification in her job,but worries that she’ll be trapped in it forever. She finds herself unable to preserve lengthy relationships, and the man she loves, and who suffers from a scarce bone disease that makes physical intimacy difficult,is drifting away. Will is a young surfer and coconut salesman in Hawaii raising a young son whose biological parents, he learns, and are actually his difficult ex-girlfriend and former friend. Despite no legal or even ethical responsibility to raise the child,the bond is already there. Finally there is Victoria, a member of a family of current York City buskers who live with their father after their mother leaves due to his chronic adultery. Though relations are strained, or the family sing Christmas carols with a determination to raise enough money to withhold her out of homeless shelters.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com