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Garden Party
Lionsgate Home Entertainment // Unrated // November 18, 2008
List Price: $27.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Film:
Since Babel and Crash have vacuumed some success in their direction over the past few years, the "everybody's connected" theme has become something of a genre all it own. What was once a semi-slick way of communicating a message has been overdone and dragged through the mud, now becoming a rudimentary and banal mechanic spreading about to films of all budget ranges. Garden Party, a drama written and directed by Jason Freeland, becomes the next in line to incorporate this style, though it takes a detour from the typically stiff forcefulness of its predecessors; instead, it plays out more like a crammed-together pilot for a potentially intriguing dark comedy series, one that infuses '70s style hippie sensibilities with modern-day woes of the Hollywood "starving star" scene.
Five beautiful entities -- a strong-willed flower chick (Willa Holland), a gaunt singer with talent (Erik Smith), an artist (Richard Gunn) with sexual mojo for everyone except his girlfriend, a weed-peddling real estate vixen (Vinessa Shaw, Eyes Wide Shut) and her ambiguous, submissive assistant (Alexander Cendese) -- all fight for their own kind of survival in the dog-eat-dog Hollywood area. Garden Party takes this network of kitschy characters and maps them out in a connect-the-dots style of random association, weaving a minor little world where everybody seems to influence each other. Each of them shares their own personal demons, elements that have molded them into both successes and failures in different rights. The one common thread that they all have, aside from a desire to just make it in this town, is that they never really reveal these personal deterrents, leaving their pasts a mystery for us to paint on our own -- and, hopefully, connect with on some level.
Garden Party plunges in somewhere between Gregg Araki's phenomenal gay/tween angst drama Mysterious Skin and Zach Braff's markedly wistful Garden State. But unlike the two, maybe three man focuses from those more internally potent dramas, Freeland's lighthearted yet temperamental insight has the gusto to inject all five of its leads with brooding, desperate energy. Most of that comes from the performances, especially from its three younger stars that chime in as the "artists" of the group. Holand, Cendese, and Smith create a non-linear triad of compelling "children of the street", allowing them to hit rock bottom first and claw their ways out of their respective pits. Though saturated with caustic tones, their dialogue flows along a somewhat natural current that aims to outline archetype entities instead of digging deep into their characters.
But part of Garden Party's magnetism comes in watching the aged denizens of Hollywood manipulate, exploit, and bizarrely care for these kids; Vinessa Shaw and Richard Gunn both do a fine job of being questionable damaged goods connected in a bizarre fashion, but Patrick Fishler's slimy photographer easily offers my favorite "malignant" element of the batch. In a strong turn from his jittery Mulholland Drive character bit -- but more in line with some of the television work that he's done -- Fischler's exploitative, undammed entrepreneur's energy rightfully becomes a strong set piece in this messed-up network of souls. He's such an unnerving actor, and he communicates that well through a photographer's lens and a pervert's sensibility here.
At its core, the desperate character interactions and cyclical predatory tone in Garden Party work well with the close-knit network theme, but there are so many coincidental hooks and tie-ins among this small cluster of strangers that it nips and tucks away realism for sub-par novelty. It'd be easier to take all this down over, say, a lengthier series of episodes instead of compressed into an hour-and-a-half coast through Hollywood's shark tank. The first half or so would work great as a narrative premiere for a stretched-out television series, as long as it counterbalanced its smarmy humor with some of the grittier concepts at work. However, when three of the central characters become roped together near the center of the film for an easy and weak-willed conjecture involving, once again, monetary woes, the consistency starts to get a little thick and never really loosens up as the complications and associations grow more labyrinthine. It lowers Garden Party a peg towards garden variety status, taking it from being a potentially novel and engaging dark comedy concept to an exercise in the now-routine interconnection theme that becomes as intriguing to follow as lacing up a tall pair of women's boots.
But, like its characters, Garden Party doesn't either give up or sacrifice its dignity just to be aggressive. Instead of trying to force a message of hope, faith, or woe in the same manner as its interwoven cousins, it becomes completely content in blithely stabilizing as a dark comedy with a simpler, less ferocious message about helping others. It doesn't preach when a young girl goes to a photography studio to be exploited for money, or glaringly frown upon a kid smoking up every night to blur his struggles with learning to gain a grasp on his sexuality. Instead, it emphasizes the efforts of others to bolster their drive in finding their true selves, though it drags all of them through some pretty murky waters along the way. There's a clear "hippie" current about the film's rhythm that coasts along with swarming sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll undertones, but with the hunger and desperation attached that comes with the territory in our artist-saturated, market-driven environment. Garden Party's got both heart and soul, but it needs to come down off its high long enough to really sell its audience on its "small-world" mannerisms.
The DVD:
Coming packaged from Lionsgate in their standard keepcase/slipcover get-up, Garden Party sports a slick, mildly over-Photoshopped cover that replicates the "pool" motif from the film.
Video and Audio Quality:
At times, Garden Party shows off some attractive camerawork in its 1.79:1 image, presented here in a suitable anamorphic widescreen image. Most of the film conducts itself in the darker corners of this world, rendering a muted conceptualization that captures the contours of night and closely-framed interior shots during daylight. Though detail gets a little muddy in spots, such as in some facial features with mid-distanced portfolio shots, edge enhancement is kept to a minimum and black levels look fine enough. The one issue that does crop up is a few instances of noisy color patches, though it only sticks out intermittently against certain shades. It's a workable transfer for a visually pedestrian film, yet it manages to highlight some quality uses of props and close-quartered facial shots.
Along the same lines, the sound quality captured in this Dolby Digital 5.1 track works to this purely dialogue-driven film's benefit. Vocal clarity was fine, if feeling a bit burdened, while the scant musical additions to the track rang true. It's not a terribly sound-savvy flick, but the simplified audio design helps to support the pedestrian quality of the film. English and Spanish subtitles are available.
Bonus Features:
Nothing noteworthy here, save a Trailer for the film.
Final Thoughts:
One of Garden Party's best attributes comes in its diverse ways of communicating with its audience, ranging from murky levels of dark comedy to fairly aggressive situational drama. It give the film a pulse at the start, but slowly gets so intertwined that a cloud of disbelief coats its efforts. Still, it's worth a Rental to see a strong effort in taking the now-popularized interconnection mechanic and making it more about the pathway instead of about the message underneath the trials.
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