***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I saw Mike Mills' short film THE ARCHITECTURE OF REASSURANCE earlier today on the Sundance Channel and decided to record it when it replayed just an hour ago. It's that great a short film, a surreal docudrama depicting the journey of a young teenage girl named Alice (note the ALICE IN WONDERLAND reference?) into a magical place--suburbia. Elise Lappin is the perfect choice to play Alice. With her small, slender body, dark brown eyes, and bad hairdo (long brown hair teased up into some kind of Hanging Gardens of Babylon), Ms. Lappin evokes the quiet sadness of a girl slowly journeying into the heart of madness.
On her journey, she encounters a mother and daughter "bonding"--Alice looks through their window and sees them as a happy family; in reality, they are arguing, which we the audience note may be a common thing in this household. The father-mother relationship is seen briefly but is successful in showing us just how close, or not, the family really is. Alice, meanwhile, shares dialogue with "frozen" porcelain figurines on display in the family's hall.
Alice escapes next door to a barbeque, complete with an Astrojump. This is where the film becomes a documentary, as an unseen interviewer asks several people about "dream houses" and the suburbs in general. Alice escapes from an inquisitive girl from the neighborhood, then is offered, and promptly rejects, a BBQ hot dog, and finally immerses herself quickly into a handheld video game, which she will use once outside the barbeque to pause a one-on-one basketball game two boys are having.
After an encounter with a real estate agent, who shows Alice a particular house for sale (all the houses look the same; this scene is a nice touch), Alice gains entry into another house by telling the girl who lives there, a blonde named Heather who will remind you of all those girls from high school with discolored streaks in their hair, worshipping Kurt Cobain, that her cat is missing. After a minor inspection of the backyard (small plastic house, pool, etc.), Heather suggests that they make peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. This one scene, and the subsequent one, is the best in the entire short, as it conveys the very difference between Alice, an outsider, and Heather, a born "suburbanite." While Alice is neat and clean, Heather is sloppy, and notice the way Alice acts around Heather during and after the making of the sandwiches.
Upstairs, in Heather's bedroom, they discuss the '80s rock band The Smiths and the neighborhood, and Heather quickly surmises that Alice is an outsider, because Alice loves the perfection of it, the "sameness." Heather tells her why everything is WRONG with the place, and asks, more rhetorically than to Alice, "Why would anyone lie about living here?" Alice, somewhat dejected, leaves, only to be rejected again by the people she encountered during the afternoon, even the figurines, who are now depicted as lawn gnomes. Alice running away from the neighborhood in the final shot is a lasting memory.
Filmed in Valencia, California, with haunting music by European techno-geniuses Air, the "sameness" is noteworthy, as that neighborhood is nearly the same as that in which I grew up, in San Diego. Most suburbs look like this, and while houses look a little different in each one, houses within the suburb are exactly alike, and barbeques and real estate agents and guys mowing their lawns and boys playing basketball are common occurrences. This is the suburb I will always remember, one I hope to raise a family in one day.
On her journey, she encounters a mother and daughter "bonding"--Alice looks through their window and sees them as a happy family; in reality, they are arguing, which we the audience note may be a common thing in this household. The father-mother relationship is seen briefly but is successful in showing us just how close, or not, the family really is. Alice, meanwhile, shares dialogue with "frozen" porcelain figurines on display in the family's hall.
Alice escapes next door to a barbeque, complete with an Astrojump. This is where the film becomes a documentary, as an unseen interviewer asks several people about "dream houses" and the suburbs in general. Alice escapes from an inquisitive girl from the neighborhood, then is offered, and promptly rejects, a BBQ hot dog, and finally immerses herself quickly into a handheld video game, which she will use once outside the barbeque to pause a one-on-one basketball game two boys are having.
After an encounter with a real estate agent, who shows Alice a particular house for sale (all the houses look the same; this scene is a nice touch), Alice gains entry into another house by telling the girl who lives there, a blonde named Heather who will remind you of all those girls from high school with discolored streaks in their hair, worshipping Kurt Cobain, that her cat is missing. After a minor inspection of the backyard (small plastic house, pool, etc.), Heather suggests that they make peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. This one scene, and the subsequent one, is the best in the entire short, as it conveys the very difference between Alice, an outsider, and Heather, a born "suburbanite." While Alice is neat and clean, Heather is sloppy, and notice the way Alice acts around Heather during and after the making of the sandwiches.
Upstairs, in Heather's bedroom, they discuss the '80s rock band The Smiths and the neighborhood, and Heather quickly surmises that Alice is an outsider, because Alice loves the perfection of it, the "sameness." Heather tells her why everything is WRONG with the place, and asks, more rhetorically than to Alice, "Why would anyone lie about living here?" Alice, somewhat dejected, leaves, only to be rejected again by the people she encountered during the afternoon, even the figurines, who are now depicted as lawn gnomes. Alice running away from the neighborhood in the final shot is a lasting memory.
Filmed in Valencia, California, with haunting music by European techno-geniuses Air, the "sameness" is noteworthy, as that neighborhood is nearly the same as that in which I grew up, in San Diego. Most suburbs look like this, and while houses look a little different in each one, houses within the suburb are exactly alike, and barbeques and real estate agents and guys mowing their lawns and boys playing basketball are common occurrences. This is the suburb I will always remember, one I hope to raise a family in one day.
