CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES Rating: (out of 5 stars) Director: Eric Byler Producers: Marc Ambrose, Eric Byler Writer: Eric Byler Director of Photography: Rob Humphreys Cast: Michael Idemoto, Jacqueline Kim, Eugenia Yuan, Matt Westmore Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew

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Review by: Ryan Kugler
6/30/02

Like the Cure song that this romantic drama is named for, the film Charlotte Sometimes is slow, moody and depressing. The Goth rockers are one of my favorite bands of all-time, but I can only take their music in twenty or thirty minute bursts. With Eric Byler's debut, we have to endure ninety minutes of doom and gloom and it's a real drag.

The film that this most reminded me of was Soderbergh's Sex, Lies and Videotape in that it's an exploration of four flawed characters and their relationships with one another. The only difference is Soderbergh had a great, professional cast and a razor-sharp screenplay to work with, while this has a so-so script and some mediocre and uninteresting performances. I realize that it's not fair to compare the two as Sex, Lies is considered a modern classic, but at the time, nobody had heard of the director and it was just a low-budget character piece. This also reminded me of a super serious version of those 80's teen movies like Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful, as you'll see in a second.

Michael (Michael Idemoto) lives alone in the upstairs part of a house in Silverlake (a part of Los Angeles) and rents the downstairs to Lori (Eugenia Yuan). The two are best friends, though Michael is in love with her and wants to be more. Lori's boyfriend Justin (Matt Westmore) has recently moved in with her, and Michael is kept up at night by the sounds of the two making love downstairs. Lori and Justin have a relationship that is based purely on sex (which they have a lot of), so there's nothing else going on. She feels an emptiness with him, so every night after the act is completed, she gets out of bed, goes upstairs, and crashes on the couch with Michael, her unthreatening best friend. This happens every night, and every morning Justin marches upstairs to get her, not really upset, as he knows that the two are just friends and he has nothing to worry about.

One night when Michael goes to his favorite club, he spots Darcy, an attractive woman, (Jacqueline Kim) and the two make eye contact. They end up meeting and Michael is smitten with her. He and Darcy hang out together all night and when Lori goes upstairs after her night of lovemaking, she's surprised when Michael announces that he can't let her in because he's with a guest. She's goes back down and falls asleep in the den. When Justin comes up to get her the next morning, he's greeted by Darcy and seems pleasantly surprised that Michael finally has something going on, which doesn't involve his girlfriend.

Darcy insists that Justin and Lori join them for lunch, and the scene is real uncomfortable for both Michael and Lori. When Lori asks if anyone needs to go to the bathroom, nobody says anything, so she specifically tells Darcy to join her. As their conversation begins, away from the others, it's clear that the two know each other and that Lori doesn't approve of Darcy hanging out with her best friend.

I had a real hard time coming to terms with my thoughts on this film. I think that I wanted to like it more than I did, but in the end, I just can't recommend it. I do, however, respect it, as it's the first American movie I can remember where the leads are Asian-American. In a Q & A session that Byler conducted after the screening, he said that there was some studio interest in his screenplay, but only if at least two of the characters were changed to Caucasian. He refused, waited several years to find the right cast and procure the proper funding, held to his guns and made the film that he envisioned.

The problem is that since his film only involves four characters and is all about relationships, the key elements are the screenplay and the actors and, in this case, both are pretty uneventful. There aren't any bad performances per se, just not any memorable ones, and Idemoto is way too uncharismatic and laid back as Michael. This guy is just boring and, once again, if you don't care about the lead character, it's hard to invest in the story. It also moves painfully slow and takes forever to get to a resolution that we knew all along it was heading for.

The film was shot on digital video and transferred to 35mm and it looks great. Cinematographer Rob Humphreys is mostly confined to working in the house where all of the characters reside, but he does a lot of cool things with light and shot composition in order to make it look a lot more interesting than it really is. He also gives us a nice feel for the neighborhood with the documentary-like club scenes. The look of the film is by far its strongest point.

The film ends with a beautiful and powerful rendition of the title song done by Jacqueline Kim (Lori). It was chilling and I was moved, but wished that the preceding film had made me feel the same way.

(A Small Planet Pictures/Visionbox Pictures release. Opened in Chicago on May 2, 2003. Expands to more cities at later dates (opens in LA on June 20, 2003.)

(Screened at the 2002 Los Angeles Film Festival)