4 stars
I don’t know how long I sat in stunned silence once the final credits rolled for My First Film, but it felt like a long time. And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Director Zia Anger, who co-wrote the thought-provoking screenplay with Billy Feldman, uses a special kind of cinema magic to pull audiences into the story of a young filmmaker struggling to finish their first feature. Pull you in and make you pay attention.
If that makes My First Film sound like a dull, artsy-fartsy, esoteric exploration of the creative process, don’t panic. Anger never loses sight of the need to entertain the people she’s trying to reach or, as her protagonist maintains, to find and share the joy in the story.
The film stars Odessa Young (The Stand) as Vita, the writer/director of the film being made. Young is also the film’s narrator, a role she plays as a standalone character and not just as Vita’s inner voice. It’s a subtle distinction between the two but significantly helps keep the audience engaged when the story jumps from past to present to connect events.
Anyone who has worked on a low-budget indie film or even watched enough of them, will readily identify with the trials and tribulations Vita goes through to get her vision on video. With a budget of about $4500 for the entire production, Vita has to depend on friends and family to work both behind and in front of the camera. That’s good and bad because while they may work for free, they also feel free to get drunk and stoned in between setups. And if they have an opinion about what they are filmmaking or what the film is really supposed to be about, they have no qualms about telling the writer/director. Anger perfectly captures the beginning of the shoot, when the friends are all friends, and the energy of the creative process keeps everyone excited. She also doesn’t shy away from showing what happens to those friendships as the energy of creating becomes the slog of just getting it done.
While that would be enough for any ‘behind the scenes’ film about filmmaking, My First Film has layers that enrich the story in some significant ways. The movie Vita is making is autobiographical, but only to a certain degree, as we learn from Vita, the Narrator. The way Anger weaves the various threads of Vita’s life and art together to make a story within the story is fascinating; sometimes, the art enhances the life, and sometimes, it’s the life that enhances the art.
Finally, Anger uses My First Film to explore globally essential issues, like women’s reproductive health care and freedom of choice. She doesn’t lecture her audience, but she doesn’t shy away from presenting scenes and situations that powerfully demonstrate the issues—and one can presume her stance on them—on the screen. The way she ends the film, pressing together all those different layers into one stunning scene, is brilliant.
