Cold Weather

Directed by Aaron Katz

(USA, 2009)

Nothing could feel more ordinary or bland than the lives of Doug (Cris Lankenau) and his sister Gail (Trieste Kelly Dunn). Doug has dropped out of his forensic studies in Chicago and returns home to Portland, Oregon, to get an apartment with his sister Gail. Sparse, banal dialogue exchanges between Doug, his sister, and their parents are incredibly realistic. Average American families talk like this—not particularly articulately, vaguely, avoiding mention of any inner troubles. Doug even appears mentally strange in the first scenes, but so do a lot of people, especially in the Pacific Northwest where convention barely exists. Unlike many drifters, Doug gets a job in an ice factory, demonstrating that he can be employed, go to work on time, and form a friendship with his fellow employee Carlos (Raúl Castillo). Then, Chris’s ex-girlfriend Rachel shows up in town, ostensibly for job training. One night, Carlos and Rachel come over to play cards with Gail and Doug, and then on another night, the foursome goes to hear Carlos as a DJ at his moonlighting job. Everything we watch on the screen is low key, mundane, humdrum, incredibly true to life. As Doug and Carlos chat at work, we learn more about Doug’s past intention to become a detective. Carlos borrows one of Doug’s Sherlock Holmes books and reads it overnight, surprising Doug. Then Carlos asks permission to go to a Star Trek convention with Rachel, and Doug assures him he has no problem with it—Rachel is no longer his girlfriend.

Thirty minutes or so into the film the audience is still watching with the kind of vague interest portrayed on the screen itself—the vague, wishy-washy world that’s so recognizable as mainstream America, especially Pacific Northwest America, where frenzied, ambitious energy subsides to barely a ripple. In itself, this is good enough material to think about, but remarkably, something else happens—a plot. Carlos wakes up Doug in the middle of the night, because Rachel is missing and he knows something is wrong. Suddenly, the latent Sherlock Holmes in Doug awakens, supported by Carlos who liked reading Conan Doyle. Together, the self-styled sleuths search Rachel’s motel room for clues and actually find some that Doug has to decipher. He takes sick days from work to solve the mystery of Rachel, and when Carlos returns to work, Gail takes up the slack. Doug buys a pipe to puff on to help him think, because a pipe had helped Sherlock.

Throughout this denouement of solving the Rachel mystery, which involves the sex trade and a briefcase full of cash, the audience has anxiety—shouldn’t these amateur detectives call the police with the clues they’ve gathered? No, maybe the police will blame the young men for Rachel’s disappearance, afterall they’ve entered her motel room with a witness (the motel’s night manager) and they’ve left their fingerprints everywhere. Later on, as Doug and Gail manage to solve the crime and make things right again, the audience wonders if their rash, heroic actions could really have taken place. A small voice answers: maybe, because people are crazy and do crazy things just like Doug and Gail, and maybe even more so in the Pacific Northwest. It’s better for the audience not to think beyond the curtain closing on that final scene of hometown, homespun success, because what happens to Rachel later—in the criminal world she’s chained herself to—remains worrisome.

This is a good movie. One wonders if foreign audiences, or other Americans unfamiliar with Portland or the Northwest, would appreciate all the nuances. Not that it would matter, just as we miss nuances in Sicilian or other foreign films. Enjoyment happens for story, character, and originality, and Cold Weather has these qualities in strong, understated measure. It leaves the impression of emerging from an “underground” tradition.

For screening times visit the San Francisco International Film Festival http://fest10.sffs.org

© 2010 Gail Spilsbury, all rights reserved

Photo: www.sffs.org