The Dark Side

I USED TO BE DARKER (B+) - This is a soundtrack in search of a script. And it finds a satisfying one.

Matthew Porterfield finally fulfills his promise in his third feature, after a rotten start with "Hamilton" (one of the original "Life Is Short" walkouts), finally sketching out fully formed characters and crafting a tight, compelling narrative.

Ostensibly a story about two teenage cousins, the film is overtaken by a squabbling couple, memorably rendered by a pair of musicians: Kim Taylor is the wife, Kim, who is moving out of the house as the movie begins, and Ned Oldham is Bill, her brooding, hurt husband. Taylor and Oldham get the squabbles and the zingers just right here. He's angry but also rather inert; she seems stifled, and she finds her own place -- as well as her own band and a new, younger lover.

Into this Baltimore mess walks Taryn (Deragh Campbell), Kim's niece who is on the lam from Ireland without her parents' knowledge. She struggles to connect with Bill and Kim's daughter, Abby (Hannah Gross), and the two have a pre-"Girls" angst about them. Taryn's running from a boy back in Europe, and Abby is quietly stewing at her parents. Abby's frustration over the split in households reaches a boil in a wonderful emotional explosion when she can't find the waffle iron that her mom absconded with.

Porterfield paces this all perfectly, and provides a magnificent mix of music, ranging from punk to freestyle jazz to the folkier tunes favored by Taylor and Oldham. (Here's the soundtrack list.) He shoots one of Taylor's performances from the perspective of a fan standing in the middle of the crowd in a small club, like the iPhone videos you see on YouTube. Here's a sample of one of Oldham's tunes:

This is all rather moving throughout. Where "Hamilton" was impossibly inert and pointless, here Porterfield has rich characters gliding through a very real story. This one leaves a mark.

PARADISE: HOPE (B-minus) - The third in the Paradise series, this one follows the daughter of the woman in the first installment ("Paradise: Love") as she attends a fat camp for kids and develops a crush on the camp's doctor, who is about 40 years older.

This would have worked better as a short film, or a one-hour episode in the trilogy. Writer/director Ulrich Seidl takes his time letting events unfold, and he's partial to long takes, letting the viewer feel like a voyeur privy to rather intimate interactions.

Melanie Lenz puts in a workmanlike effort as young Melanie, a chubby teen aching to experience love and sex. She pals around with the more experienced (or so she claims) Verena (Verena Lehbauer). Melanie hopes for the doctor to make a move on her, but their interactions are understandably fraught with anxiety, not to mention absurdities. Melanie and Verena also sneak out and get drunk at a club, risking assault by a couple of low-lifes. In their downtime, the girls and their pals lounge around a lot, often cuddling in that nonchalant ways girls that age do.

This whole exercise doesn't necessarily tie in to the other parts of the trilogy, though Melanie tries multiple times to reach her mom, who has gone off, interestingly, on a sex romp in Africa. As a coming-of-age film, this has its insights. But it does drag, and the payoff is less than overwhelming.


BONUS TRACK
And here's the ex-wife's side of the story. Kim Taylor sings this one over the closing credits in "I Used to Be Darker":