This film was so will-sappingly wearisome that it made me want to take a large butcher knife and shove it up through the bottom of my mouth, into my brain and out the top of my head. I spent the last hour of it forcing myself to keep watching while praying to Shiva, Zoroaster, Buddha or any other cosmic entity to make the pain stop.
Tan Lines is one of those film festival entries made by an aspiring filmmaker that thanks to the thrice-damned nature of the DVD market now gets puked up onto video store shelves across the country, where it sinisterly waits for some poor, unsuspecting shmuck to rent it. I am one of those schmucks. These type of movies were never really meant to be seen by anyone except film festival judges and, as such, it never even attempts to be entertaining in basic ways. The goal of these films is to be weird, pretentious or dull enough that some festival judge somewhere mistakes it for art and gives it an award, which the filmmaker can then list on their resume when they try to get a job on a real movie. The weird or pretentious festival entries can sometimes be enjoyable crap. Tan Lines is one of the dull ones, where only invalids and movie reviewers ever watch the whole thing.
The story concerns an Australian carpenter named Jaime (Andrew Southern) and three sisters named Esther, Julia and Christina (Antonina Lewis, Frida Show and Siri Ingul) who run into each other while taking bohemian vacations in France. Esther likes Jaime but he hooks up with Julia and the rest of the story is everyone alternately moping and bitching about how that was a mistake and Esther and Jaime should have gotten together. Along with Jaime having a one night stand with a barmaid who happens to be prettier than any of the sisters, and him pointlessly hitching a ride through the French countryside with an old guy named Geoff, that's the whole film. If you can imagine watching that happen while slowly freezing to death in a meat locker, you've got a good idea of what Tan Lines is like.
I am not exaggerating when I say you could get rid of about the 1st 20 minutes of this movie, from the opening credits that look like they were created by some high school kid with a Commodore 64 to where Jaime meets the sisters, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference to the story. None of the acting rises above bad dinner theater. None of the writing surpasses the entertainment value of the list of ingredients for cough syrup. None of the images in this film look better than the home movies shot by some Brooklyn Jewish couple of their big trip to Atlantic City in 1965.
Films like Tan Lines are the reason God invented fast forward. If you ever by some horrible accident rent this movie, after the first 10 minutes please use the fast forward button to see if anything in it looks good. It won't, so you can stop the DVD and go read a book or clip your toenails or something.
Tan Lines is one of those film festival entries made by an aspiring filmmaker that thanks to the thrice-damned nature of the DVD market now gets puked up onto video store shelves across the country, where it sinisterly waits for some poor, unsuspecting shmuck to rent it. I am one of those schmucks. These type of movies were never really meant to be seen by anyone except film festival judges and, as such, it never even attempts to be entertaining in basic ways. The goal of these films is to be weird, pretentious or dull enough that some festival judge somewhere mistakes it for art and gives it an award, which the filmmaker can then list on their resume when they try to get a job on a real movie. The weird or pretentious festival entries can sometimes be enjoyable crap. Tan Lines is one of the dull ones, where only invalids and movie reviewers ever watch the whole thing.
The story concerns an Australian carpenter named Jaime (Andrew Southern) and three sisters named Esther, Julia and Christina (Antonina Lewis, Frida Show and Siri Ingul) who run into each other while taking bohemian vacations in France. Esther likes Jaime but he hooks up with Julia and the rest of the story is everyone alternately moping and bitching about how that was a mistake and Esther and Jaime should have gotten together. Along with Jaime having a one night stand with a barmaid who happens to be prettier than any of the sisters, and him pointlessly hitching a ride through the French countryside with an old guy named Geoff, that's the whole film. If you can imagine watching that happen while slowly freezing to death in a meat locker, you've got a good idea of what Tan Lines is like.
I am not exaggerating when I say you could get rid of about the 1st 20 minutes of this movie, from the opening credits that look like they were created by some high school kid with a Commodore 64 to where Jaime meets the sisters, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference to the story. None of the acting rises above bad dinner theater. None of the writing surpasses the entertainment value of the list of ingredients for cough syrup. None of the images in this film look better than the home movies shot by some Brooklyn Jewish couple of their big trip to Atlantic City in 1965.
Films like Tan Lines are the reason God invented fast forward. If you ever by some horrible accident rent this movie, after the first 10 minutes please use the fast forward button to see if anything in it looks good. It won't, so you can stop the DVD and go read a book or clip your toenails or something.
