Direction: Max Walker-Silverman
Country: USA
Max Walker-Silverman’s pensive indie drama, A Love Song, didn’t have the impact I was expected. There’s more synthetic quilt than real fabric and thread weaving this story of two lonely widowed friends - Faye (Dale Dickey) and Lito (Wes Studi) - who have become estranged over the years, and now try to find solace in each other.
Faye has been living in a trailer since she lost her partner seven years ago. She’s stationed in a campsite by a lake in the Colorado mountains for quite some time. Living day by day from coffee and seafood, she patiently awaits Lito, her former love, who finally arrives to spend one night.
It gets pretty hard to penetrate beyond the superficialities of their past relationship and the awkwardness of being face to face again after decades. The way the film is presented doesn’t allow us to excavate deeply into these characters’ souls.
The film carries a mechanical melancholy that becomes trivial after a while. By looking deeper into the author's approach, it’s not impossible to find a certain artlessness in his work. Despite the beauty of the scenic, bucolic landscape where it all takes place, the story offers few surprises, and we're left with a stunted perspective of hope and accomplishment that is unfulfilling. Too bad that the staging never deviates from the marked path, and the film doesn’t pass the barrier of conventionality.
