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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(from the 2011 South by Southwest Film Festival)

Directed/Written by: Sophia Takal
Starring: Lawrence Michael Levine, Kate Lyn Sheil and Sophia Takal

After the first two minutes of “Green” — in which a relationship is on display at a Brooklyn party where its duo fight over literary masters for the position of first peacock — one worries this is a film set squarely at alienating everyone other than Noah Baumbach or a brother Coen.

Cut to Sebastian (Lawrence Michael Levine) and Genevieve (Kate Lyn Sheil) arriving at a country house in the midst of nature, alone and less argumentative, soon naked and searching each other for tick bites. Cue a knock on the door: A neighbor, Robin (the film’s helmer, Sophia Takal), arrives drunk and smoking pot on their doorstep. Takal’s boastfully uneducated Robin proceeds to make herself at home in the couple’s company, turning up at welcome and unwelcome moments and interrupting the quiet with her brand of verbal diarrhea.

A disquieting score akin to “The Shining” suggests an evil on its way from within the woods, and, as does every film when city folk head to the bush, it invokes a sense of Stanley Kubrick’s thriller or other chill generators such as “Deliverance” and “Straw Dogs.”

Levine’s Jason Schwartzman-like hipster look works well for the film, and despite his character’s attempts to get into the local scene, he never looks like someone who should feel at ease in this rural setting. Ultimately, however, Sheil’s Genevieve and Takal’s Robin are the most effective tools of this film’s expression, each appearing to balance on opposite edges of a sword and both searingly interesting, especially when internal jealousies begin to rage, questions become concerns and insecurities seem insurmountable.

In just 72 minutes, the filmmaker succeeds in keeping us in a constant state of curiosity, wondering if and when something sinister will unfold and whether it will be the Brooklyn-ites or the Southern simpleton who’ll inflict the damage. So much of the mood of the movie is inculcated by Robert Malone’s sounds and Nandan Rao’s visuals that one could not imagine how they would or could have been executed any more perfectly, even when off-kilter.

While “Gabi on the Roof in July” outed Takal and fiancé Levine as an interesting team on which to keep an eye (that effort helmed by Levine), “Green” is the film that shows the pronounced poise Takal has as a filmmaker and cements her as a future player alongside Laurel Nakadate (“The Wolf Knife”) in this multi-faceted medium.

Photo courtesy South by Southwest