In 2019, Freddy Macdonald gained attention with a short film (freely viewable on Searchlight Pictures’ YouTube channel) that helped him get admitted to the American Film Institute. On the advice of Joel Coen, the young director, aided by his father as producer and co-writer, turned the concept into his first feature-length project: Sew Torn, which premiered at SXSW and chose Locarno’s Piazza Grande to inaugurate its international life with a late night slot. It should continue to play well on the festival circuit, particularly at events with genre/midnight strands, and will appeal to fans of crime movies that have a little something extra.
Set in a nondescript Alpine location in Switzerland (Macdonald is Swiss on his mother’s side), the film revolves around Barbara Duggen (Eve Connolly), a seamstress who is struggling to keep her late mother’s fabric shop alive. One assignment in particular causes her to leave the village, and while driving she stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad: two motorcyclists on the road with their guns and a briefcase. Barbara has three choices: commit the perfect crime, call 911, or just leave and pretend nothing ever happened.
The movie explores the outcome of all three scenarios, a sort of Run Lola Run by way of No Country For Old Men (the latter being the declared inspiration for the original Sew Torn short). And while the compellingly eerie mood is present from the beginning, the film really comes alive with its heightened sense of reality (or realities) the minute that fork in the road presents itself: Macdonald takes full advantage of the hypnotic blend of a typically American premise transposed to a Swiss-German village (the movie was shot entirely in the Sarganserland region of the canton of St. Gallen, in the north-east of Switzerland), with the mountains and forests adding to the increasingly surreal flavor of proceedings.
Much of the dramatic tension rests on the shoulders of Eve Connolly, whose innocent facial features are the ideal conduit for the moral doubts that populate the premise and give each segment a distinct feel while still retaining the sense of everything being part of a neatly constructed whole (fittingly, the main title card is literally sewn into existence). She receives solid support from a group of screen veterans whose ranks include fellow Irish performer John Lynch in a brief but indelible role and British/Australian actress Caroline Goodall as the posh client whose demands lead to the multiple-choice incident.
The other star player is, of course, Macdonald himself, who in addition to writing and directing also serves as the picture’s editor, effectively taking on a role similar to Barbara’s, as he has to create a coherent, visually appealing pattern from the fragments assembled during principal photography. Be it literally or metaphorically, on screen and off, it all hangs by a thread, and the protagonist and her creator prove equally skilled at obtaining impressive results from the smallest of starting points. The shop may be nearing the chopping block, but everything that led to us seeing it on the screen suggests that the new Swiss-American talent behind the camera is here to stay, beyond the 95-minute confine of this carefully plotted, energetic feature debut.
Director: Freddy Macdonald
Screenwriters: Freddy Macdonald, Fred Macdonald
Cast: Eve Connolly, Calum Worthy, John Lynch, Caroline Goodall, K Callan, Thomas Douglas, Ron Cook, Werner Biermeier, Veronika Herren-Wenger
Producers: Fred Macdonald, Barry Navidi, Sebastian Klinger, Diamantis Zavitsanos, Socratis Zavitsanos
Cinematography: Sebastian Klinger
Production design: Viviane Rapp
Costume design: Viviane Rapp
Music: Jacob Tardien
Sound: Alexander Stratigenas
Production companies: Sew Torn, ORISONO
World sales: UTA
Venue: Locarno Film Festival (Piazza Grande)
In English
95 minutes