FilmSnobReviews

Title: Spiral Farm
Rating: NR
Director: Alec Tibaldi
Starring: Piper De Palma, Amanda Palmer, Cosimo Fusco
Runtime: 1hr 25min

What It Is: Seventeen-year-old Anahita (DePalma) is looking for more than what her isolated, hippie-run community can offer. Tempted by the outside world (and a boy), she takes the chance to audition for a place in a dance company in this coming-of-age drama.

What We Think: Okay—honesty time. This is the least amount of notes I’ve written for a film review so far in my career. Within these notes are dry scribbles and bland observations about the plot, the most I could really pull together when going back over this film. “Love-triangle this,” “aspiring dancer that”; “slow and tedious”, “a jealous protagonist.” There isn’t that much this film really does wrong except for failing to capture my imagination, affection, or attention, with the exception of the always entertaining and commanding presence that is Amanda Plummer. I’d watch a movie where she plays a hippie coping with life by being high all the time. Otherwise, the plot is nothing you haven’t seen before, only quieter. While the very first shot (a silent moment as we watch Ahahita dancing in the woods in the dark) leaves the viewer questioning, the rest of film offers rather anticlimactic answers at a snail’s pace.

Our Grade: F+, It’s a harsh grade, I know. Admittedly I don’t feel great about it, as I feel it very well could have had potential. It was shot just fine, with a sort of quiet intensity reinforced by a handheld camera, but the characters just couldn’t hold the story above the surface. Narratively a little help from the script perhaps could have coalesced it all?