Writers and Directors: Boyd Anderson and J. Markus Anderson
Perhaps Raindance’s strangest film, If You Should Leave Before Me is a surreal study of grief and the loss of love that draws its influence from Wes Anderson and Tim Burton, certainly in tone, but also from the small melodramas of the 1970s. Boyd Anderson and J. Markus Anderson’s film is ambitious in scope, bleeding beyond its boundaries to explore life and death within a single relationship, and while the ideas are bold, the execution over a rather prolonger 2 hours starts to drift.
Frustrated by his partner Joshua (John Wilcox) who continually challenges the quiet organisation of the kitchen and the other areas of their lives, their bickering is distracted by a series of intimidating doors opening in their home taking them through portals to alternative worlds where they meet a variety of people who have loved and lost, leading the men to reflect on their own relationship and what the future might look lie.
The interaction between the real life of Joshua and Mark and the heightened doorways they enter is a little sticky, the couple are not particularly well drawn or investable as they argue about coffee organisation in their cupboard, Joshua is demanding and unsympathetic, delivering a performance that is not only too big for the scenario of domestic and established romantic intimacy but also makes his role in the film and the effort that Mark gives to placate him hard to justify. The audience need to understand why these men are together and, more importantly, will them to succeed which, unfortunately, you don’t, we learn too little about them.
Most of the other worlds created are interested if purposefully bizarre; the first two are arguably most successfully; the first is a Narnia-like place with a man driving a Postman Pat style van who takes the couple for a drive and tells his tory of love with an illustrated woman across the boundaries of human intervention – it is rather odd but a well-realised segment. Likewise, the second story of a catfished woman who collections China has a different alternative tone but there is depth in her lack of self-realisation and the catharsis she finds through meeting the couple even if it barely touches them.
The remainder of the film, however, becomes a mish mash of ideas – a former Nazi, a friend of the man who breaks through the doorway into their home and engages in a peculiar Quentin Tarantino-style fight with one of them. But what Anderson and Anderson are trying to say, why these portals appear and how the very different stories are meant to connect to each other is lost. The concept is overly draw out as a result, and If You Should Leave Before Me becomes both increasingly silly and much less interesting as the men amble through these things with not much purpose
Shane P. Allen’s quieter performance as Mark is the more interested and the film’s conclusion offers some eventual clues to the purpose of the film, but it becomes quite a feat to follow this convoluted approach for near 2 hours, and not everyone will stay this lengthy course.
If You Should Leave Before Me is screening at theRaindance Film Festivalfrom 18-27 June.
