AWOL

The Orchard

                Once again it took slogging through the independent film releases to find an LGBTQIA love story. Honestly, when will there be more representation of these characters in mainstream filmmaking? Luckily there’s anime, book series, fan fiction, and television series that don’t shy away from this kind of representation, but I can count the amount of theatrical queer releases, out in the last ten years, on one hand. Luckily for us, filmmaker Deb Shoval has created an immensely satisfying film that showcases these kinds of characters, but also says a lot about rural America and the desperation of trying to escape poverty.

            Deb Shoval has been trying to make her own films for seven years. This feature film is based on a short of the same name, also starring Breeda Wool as Rayna. Fortunately for us Wool is paired with well-known streaming star Lola Kirke, showcasing an electric chemistry that fuels the entirety of this film. This is set in a blisteringly tiny town in rural Pennsylvania, rife with inequality, strife, and uncertainty. Joey (Kirke) is a nineteen year old hourly worker who wants to join the army to pay for college. Rayna (Wool) is a mother of two whose husband is away a lot. After meeting at a carnival where Joey works the pair strikes up a romance on the borders of both of their lives. The film touches on many themes, the central one being desperation. Each wants to leave town, start a new life, and be bigger than their claimed identities. When they’re not together it’s intensely depressing, and as an audience member you’re constantly gripped by panic and subtle strains of hope.

            Authenticity is threaded throughout every aspect of this film, blending together moments in broken down, squalid trailer homes, unfinished basements, and streets lined with bars and churches alike. The fields, which could have once been called bucolic, lend to a feeling of sepia despair. All in all, Shoval, who grew up in coal country, understands placement and setting better than other independent directors, who often try to cover their lack of funding with borrowed homes and tacky tracking shots.

            While I truly love the choices made in this film, I don’t think I love the ending. It’s unexpected, lends to a truly heartbreaking narrative about love and the choices we make, but it feels incomplete. I don’t think we’re always owed explanations about characters’ fates, , but in this case there’s too much despair. It feels more melodramatic than anything, and in a film that relies heavily on realism, it feels out of place. Before that shift, it was one of the truest films about the state of the world that I’ve seen since Winter’s Bone.