What seems most precious about the film to me is, in a lot of ways, just how it depicts a commonplace reality. That seems so scarce now, so barely represented or even pursued. I don't know why that is other than that it does, I guess, court a kind of banality. But God knows our event pictures or even what passes for human drama most of the time now is banality writ large. The level of scrupulous care and observation you get here is so rare as to be almost without precedent.
It's a commonplace reality which is made up not just of recognizable details but relatable characteristics and qualities, even when we might most like to differentiate ourselves from those things. But that's part of that unremitting scrupulous care in observation. It is warts and all to be sure. Much of that has to do with the sincerity of the characters, their open expressivity, their willingness to be hurt as part of the necessity of opening themselves up to love. But it's also in an all around portraiture of vulnerability and exposure that make up the characters and their environment (never has the bleakness of Salt Lake City been so well employed--and I say that as someone who actually lived there at around the time this was shot). Only Alan Rudolph's films seem to traffic so thoroughly in exposed and vulnerable characters, to make them so much the predominant fabric and texture of the specific filmic reality, and yet his films are far more about highly stylized presentations and so have to deal with that as well. In
Chilly Scenes, the most foundational level element here, as it undergirds the rest, is a kind of quietly wistful and pensive listlessness, a very particular post-60's fallout of ultimate aimlessness that ends up also being very universal.
Over the last few years this film has come to be understood more and more as a kind of perverse anti-rom com about a main character who exhibits a toxic masculinity and all the defining characteristics of a stalker rather than romantic hero. And while it is great that this aspect is being picked up on, perhaps inevitably during an era which is so sensitively attuned to it, I wouldn't come down as heavily on that part of the equation. It risks too much be-all-end-all conclusiveness, a sort of counter-productive reductionism. The film is simply too great at being an all-at-once depiction of longing and regret and love to be seen or understood as primarily just one thing: it really is that ideal of comedy/drama/horror which does not seek to overly distinguish each element from the rest and therefore comes closest to a genuine and comprehensive envisioning of our reality.
Conversely though, I do think that Daniel Kremer's assessment of it
here (and the trailer itself) is perhaps a little too rosy and makes perhaps too little of the challenge of our ostensible romantic lead: while we may be sympathetic to his struggles and see some of ourselves in him, he does also quite comfortably fit most modern definitions of an obsessed stalker and that confrontational element never abates; if anything it intensifies. I do appreciate the shout out in the video to Danny Peary, one of my own greatest influences and inspirations (and his write-up on this movie really is second to none).
