Straight Forward

The best thing about this independently-produced film is the script by Stacia Crawford, who also plays Maggie the studio exec’s PA. It is however let down by the makeshift production design and rudimentary directing (to date, 2015, it is Nato's only feature film).

Straight Forward is an ironically-titled mystery drama about a 1940s Hollywood studio writer who heads off with his starlet wife and a young aspiring actor to a holiday cabin to work on a film script.  From the get-go Ms Crawford’s script makes it evident that some of the players have a hidden agenda but to her credit is it far from clear who has it and what it is as in the best mystery tradition we suspect now this character, now that, before the intriguing reveal. The latter, which involves a considerable shift of perspective is not particularly well handled and the crunching of gears as the film rapidly changes direction can be heard streets away.

The story and style, with its cutaways from the main narrative to sequences in a mental hospital, the insertion of 1940s newsreel footage and a darkening off the film edges to make us feel as if we are watching the protagonists through a spy-hole, immediately suggests the films of David Lynch or Guy Madden. Whilst this is quite effective in achieving a sense of the eerie and disjointed where the film particularly falls down is in its production design which does not simply fail to look convincingly 1940s but in places (notably in the case of the cigar-chomping, tin-star wearing detective) border on the laughably B grade. Clearly the film was produced on a very limited budget but this does not mitigate the disservice done to its originary concept, the potential of which is far from fully realized here.

In fact one cannot help but suspect that Straight Forward began its life as a repertory theatre project that was successful enough to inspire the company (many of the actors have roles on the production side) to turn it into a film. Certainly Jason Nato’s mise-en-scène suggests a theatre-setting, with the camera largely inert as it records what are essentially stage performances. Cinema brings with it a very different set of expectations from theatre and these are roughly handled here. However if you can re-imagine this as a repertory work that you happen to be watching in the more naturalistic medium of film it is a worthwhile, and for those who appreciate grassroots theatre, at least, an engaging experience.

 

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