Let's talk about... "Zoom" as directed by Pedro Morelli493Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsGI3ACsYPF
I watched "Zoom" the film for the first time last night and I was initially a little tepid to even begin. It doesn't have stellar ratings. Even the short blurbs I'd read on the movie explaining its basic premise had been more than a little bit misleading. It's genre was a little confounding. Drama/Comedy/Brazilian? I wish that was enough to cover its bases... But perhaps that's just it. It really is all of those things in retrospect.493Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXVDLARPxE4
WHAT IS IT?493Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaP5pG3IHgS
Lemme explain--Spoiler free. It's three interconnected stories, each styled a little differently; each exploring an angle on that age-old theme: be yourself. Seems pretty cut and dry. The twist? Each of these stories directly or indirectly effects the other, ala a kaleidoscope effect of A touching B touching C touching A... et al. As Wikipedia puts it: "[Zoom is about] a comic book artist, a novelist, and a film director from separate realities [writing] stories about one another."
WHAT'S IT ABOUT?
The beginning of the film surrounds Emma. She's a wanna-be comic artist who works on a sex doll factory floor. She's hung up on not having big boobs, so she gets plastic surgery and discovers that having big boobs is not exactly a Godsend. People stare, people gawk, her new endowments get in the way, etc. [This part of the film is funny, just funny. The cinematography is industry standard here--high saturation, contrasts of cool and warm colors, lots of still shots and cuts. In a lot of areas, there's some pretty decent symmetry.]
To channel her frustrations, Emma creates a comic character named Edward. Eddy is a suave director trying to let go of his Hollywood action film roots by producing an artsy film about a Brazilian model. Unfortunately, he can't get his way in the industry unless he sleeps around and manipulates his producers. [This part of the film is the strongest of the three, execution-wise. It's all rotoscope animation, hand-drawn frame-for-frame over film. At 30 minutes of animation, that's about 20,000 frames--and they all look gorgeous! There are lots of zooming shots and action line transitions. The color pallet is more about mood than it is about accuracy. The beautifully realized actor expressions really carry the otherwise silly narrative.]
Michelle, the model, is trying to shed this expectation that just because she is pretty, she has nothing to contribute to society. She shucks off her smothering boyfriend and heads back to Brazil to work on her novel about a girl named Emma and her misadventures. [The cinematography is live-action, like that of Emma's part of the story, but it's a bit more unsaturated. The camera pans and spins and cants and shakes. The color pallet is grounded in greens and blues and whites. The direction is more about what you feel than what you think. Sometimes non-sequitur images are cut into a couple frames, to make an elusion to something else. It's simply moving.]
After the characters are basically introduced, we pop back to our "main" story. Emma tries to play take-back-zees on her buxom bust, but her doc informs her that it's going to cost about the same to remove them. Broker that a joke, she goes home, pissed off to all hell, and gets back to her comic. But, frustrated with Eddy's evident success, she decides to take away his power... and shrinks his dick. Edward quickly loses confidence when it comes to his movie and it's hijacked by his assistant director, while he ventures off to find out what happened to his penis. Meanwhile, this in turn affects Michelle's world, turning her story into more of a blockbuster action film than an artsy statement on beauty and modern expectation.
As if things weren't already outrageous enough, that's the point where things get nuts.
POSITIVES
I'm the kind of person that laughs at awkward moments, dick jokes, ridiculous situations, and blatant irony. If you like all those things, you'll adore this movie. The art direction keeps the stories neatly separated, but when their narratives intersect, you can see similar motifs, sets, and even actors cross over into each other's world. By the climax, it seems more science-fiction than anything else. They become aware of each other's interference and... it's funny. It's not smart or reasonable or even understandable, but it IS enjoyable to watch.
NEGATIVES
The spiral at the end is a little discombobulating. Even Emma remarks, "This is stupid!" in response to what's happening. During the credits, Eddy's producer and a. director discuss how shit the ending of "Zoom" is. And they're right. It is pretty much garbage. But just because even the characters all admit that the ending is crap, does not excuse it for being so--for the record. I thought the ending was funny, don't get me wrong. And I thought it was fitting, considering that the core theme of the movie is literally "breaking free from expectation". But it still didn't explain itself. It left more to the audience than was necessary. Now, am I creative enough to make up a head cannon that gives me closure? Sure. But should I be made to do that every time I walk into a movie? No. Sometimes, I just want to be spoon-fed some god-damned spectacle, thank you.
FINAL THOUGHTS
"Zoom" (2015) is going in my private movie collection because the animation is amazing (IT'S CLEVER AF, YO) and I think the story is mildly interesting. It's one of those movies that I will put on during a get-together to get people talking and asking questions. Is this film for everyone? No. It's artsy, it's balls deep in its own arsehole, and it's well aware of the fact. It's ironic, it's dark, it's twisted, and it's silly. It flips convention onto its B-Side and then has an accident on it. It's characters are stock and trade, but it delights in showcasing those tropes in new and interesting ways. It wants to get people talking about beauty standards among women AND MEN... and that's awesome. So, if you've got 97 minutes to spare, and you don't mind gratuitous amounts of nudity and bad language, give "Zoom" (2015) a shot. I don't care how you go about doing so, but watch it.
Let me know what you thought of the ending!
Cheers - Blondie
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