La La Land

No, not that movie. We already reviewed it.

ALWAYS SHINE (C+) - Wherein the cool indie kids are indulged with enough money to make yet another movie about the fascinating world of actors and filmmakers, with their favorite twist: hipster horror-flick undertones.

Our gal Sophia Takal ("Wild Canaries," "Gabi on the Roof in July," "Supporting Characters") goes behind the camera for the second time (we still haven't seen her obscure debut "Green") with car-wreck results. She collaborates here with her partner, Lawrence Michael Levine (who made "Canaries" and "Gabi"), interpreting his script about two actress friends who spend a contentious weekend at Big Sur.

Not much works here; the first half is rather tedious, and the second half is a mess. Beth (Caitlin Fitzgerald) is a meek, soft-spoken bleach blonde (looking like Sharon Stone with the sexuality liposuctioned out of her) having some success in acting, though it comes in cheap horror films (how meta) that require extensive nudity and a lucrative beer commercial. Anna (Mackenzie Davis, a cross between Jennifer Garner and Elisabeth Moss) is much more assertive, bordering on angry.

The two characters have such little friendship chemistry you have to wonder why they would even want to spend a weekend together. Beth seems to be passive-aggressively sabotaging Anna by not sending to her agent Anna's reel and not telling Anna that a low-budget avant-garde director whom Beth ran into on the street wants to cast Anna in his new short. That last part is problematic for two reasons. First, it later turns out that the director has Anna's number, so you wonder why he even has to ask Beth to ask Anna to contact him. (That's not the only nonsensical scene in the movie.) Second, it is emblematic of the incestuous nature of this story about pampered, privileged indie actors in L.A. You have to work as a waitress?? Boo-hoo.

Takal makes some curious choices here, and her touch behind the camera is clunky. At times she seems to be nodding to Hitchcock and Polanski, but her technique is amateurish, and she traffics in tropes. Cheesy incidental music fails to inspire dread. Her lighting and blocking is antiseptic; we get luscious establishing shots of the ocean, the moon, a massive bridge -- but the bulk of the sets look more like movie sets than actual locations. We get a lot of twinning and call-backs of dialogue and images, a sharp nudge to the viewer's ribs about the Big Theme of duality.

Takal also seems to be making a point about the male gaze and the objectification of women's bodies, but then she likes to linger over their bodies (for example, showering elegantly, one arm sensually raised high, like they do in Dove commercials), going to distracting lengths to make sure she doesn't show any R-rated body parts. It's more meta commentary that doesn't seem to add up with the rest of the story.

The final half hour blurs the identity of the two women (calling to mind such mind-benders as "Mulholland Drive," which does the writer and director here no favors) and finally cops to being a suspense film. Afterward, you might have a good debate about what really happens at the end. If only "Always Shine" had enough logic and depth to warrant such analysis.

The tinkering with the identities also betrays the limited skills of Fitzgerald and Davis, as well as the holes in Levine's script that they struggle with. In the final reel, Jane Adams shows up for one scene, hosting one of the woman and her slightly creepy new beau. Adams previously paired off nicely with Takal on screen in Joe Swanberg's similarly thin gruel, "All the Light in the Sky." Here, Adams' presence provides another distraction from the story by reminding us what a substantive actor can do with such a pockmarked script.

Levine and Takal have shown a lot of promise. What was fresh and clever in the couple's previous efforts now feels precious and derivative. "Always Shine" is like that sophomore album -- a placeholder that makes you wonder if the first one was a fluke and whether this band will step it up to the next level.