Blatant Interest
2024 · 10m · USA
Directed by Liam Barton
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
A 16mm hangout film follows a 21-year-old drifting between Brooklyn and his North Carolina hometown. Vignettes and musical interludes accumulate into casual encounters where nothing in particular happens, beautifully.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Plot-free 16mm vignettes about a 21-year-old going nowhere in particular: catnip. The kind of film that festival juries reject for lacking stakes, which is precisely why it has them.
Barton works in the Linklater drift register with 16mm and electronica interludes, which is a beautiful tradition and also a crowded one. Hangout cinema needs a particular voice to escape its template, and from the page I can't yet tell if this has one.
16mm hangout with electronica interludes and zero plot — the format pays for the structurelessness, and the Brooklyn-to-Raleigh axis (rooftop beer cans, dentist appointment, F150) reads as lived. Risky for a wrong audience, beautiful for the right one.