The Austin independent film scene is a self-contained world, guided by its own minimalist aesthetics and wry humor. Its inward-looking individuality is admirable, yet that very quality makes it difficult to translate onto an international market, though Bob Byington has had more opportunities than most to show his films outside the States: Frances Ferguson, 7 Chinese Brothers, Somebody Up There Likes Me, and others. His latest, Lousy Carter, remains firmly in that mold, filmed in Austin and edited largely in shot-counter shot with lowkey dialogue full of snide zingers delivered by a cast well-known to acolytes of the subgenre. Set on a college campus where an uninspired English professor with unrealized dreams is told he has six months to live, the film relies heavily on a pre-existing fan base, for whom this will be a pleasant entertainment.
The film starts with a framed photo of Lousy Carter (David Krumholz), his peculiar name never addressed, with a quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald describing Jay Gatsby as someone with “an extraordinary gift for hope.” Professor Carter has made a specialty out of The Great Gatsby, but the description doesn’t fit him at all: he’s a schlub of a figure with an extraordinary gift for disappointing people, himself most of all. Once an animation filmmaker who hoped for a bright career, Lousy is now financially strapped and trapped teaching students he doesn’t care about. At the film’s start his indifferent doctor informs him he has six months to live, setting off a re-evaluation of his life that begins by falling off the wagon.
His one confidante is his ex gf Candela (Olivia Thirlby), a no-nonsense beauty with no interest in humoring his self-pity, though she does suggest that a good way to get out of his current funk is to sleep with one of his students. It’s probably better advice than he gets from his Jungian therapist (Stephen Root assuming a parody of a Mitteleuropean accent), who hasn’t even begun to explore Lousy’s poor relationship with his hyper-critical alcoholic wheelchair-bound mother (Mona Lee Fultz). Even Lousy’s best friend, humorless Russian lit professor Herschel Kaminsky (Martin Starr) is less than supportive, though at least an affair with Herschel’s wife (Jocelyn DeBoer) offers some pleasant distraction.
So too does grad student Gail (Luxy Banner, in a notable debut), the only one of his Gatsby seminar students who seems remotely interested in the topic, but even more important for Lousy is that she enjoys, in a very deadpan Gen Z kind of way, toying with his expectations. By far the most interesting of the film’s sparky sardonic slingers, Gail passively agrees to be the model for Carter’s desired animated adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Laughter in the Dark, despite knowing full well that the underachiever will never get it off the ground.
Underneath the casual witty retorts and detached humor is a sad-sack of a man whose ambitions lie puddled on the floor, metaphorically using a spoon like the boy in St. Augustine’s legend trying to empty out the sea and gather it back up again. The problem for those unaccustomed to this kind of American indie filmmaking is that it feels as if everyone is in a suburban vacuum, gently and generously being joshed. We can admire Byington’s clear affection for these characters, together with the sympathy he gives to their struggles, yet anyone wanting a sharp-edged satire will be disappointed. There are good-natured laughs at easy targets, derived from a bemused look at the immediate world around him, but that’s pretty much it. Perhaps that’s enough for hardcore fans.
As for the filming, the persistent use of shot-counter shot in almost all conversations makes it feel as if the actors aren’t even in the same room together when the camera is on, with the result that we never feel a genuine connection between anyone. That’s likely one of Byington’s points, since no relationship here is believable anyway, but it significantly hamstrings any identification with these people. Also peculiar is the hesitant insertion of music, especially one recurrent tune used so softly in the sound mix that it ironically feels bothersomely intrusive.
Director, screenplay: Bob Byington
Cast: David Krumholz, Olivia Thirlby, Martin Starr, Jocelyn DeBoer, Luxy Banner, Stephen Root, Trieste Kelly Dunn, Shelby Surdham, Andrew Bujalski, Macon Blair, Mona Lee Fultz, Lee Eddy, Randy Aguebor
Producers: Bob Byington, Chris McKenna
Executive producers: Stuart Bohart, Tim League
Cinematography: Carmen Hilbert, Lauren Pruitt
Production designer: Iman Corbani
Costume designer: Olivia Mori
Editing: Kris Boustedt
Music: Leafcuts
Sound: Kris Boustedt
Production company: American Brutto (USA)
World sales: UTA
Venue: Locarno Film Festival (International competition)
In English
76 minutes
