Here's what the creatures had to say:
Lord Battle - "After seeing the amazing Love Witch at the Roxie theatre a couple months ago, the last thing I felt like watching was another 70's throwback. Of course, my closed mindedness resulted in me eating my words. Sweet Sweet Lonely Girl is definitely a period piece but that doesn't stop it from feeling timeless. The House of the Devil starred Jocelin Donahue (Dead Awake) who really anchored that film in the 70's as her facial features are very reminiscent of actresses from the era, as where Erin Wilhelmi (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) does not. My favorite thing about SSLG is the conversation its ending inspired. SSLG really plays with genre tropes and leads the audience down a very familiar path but when you come out the end and realize you have no idea how you got there, it really makes you reconsider what you just watched. And for audience members like me who thought they knew everything about this film from a synopsis, the impact is all the more meaningful. Also girls kissing never hurts" - 4 Stars
Huntress - "Sweet Sweet Lonely Girl started out with all the elements of a slow building, supernatural, antisocial film; huge ornate and nearly empty house, quiet curious girl, secretive agoraphobic aunt, but it went so long without playing up atmosphere or tension that I just lost interest. For the longest time, the fastest moving element was the camera cuts, which I feel like I paid extra attention to because there was nothing else going on. The two descriptors I heard about this movie (moments before starting it) were agoraphobia and lesbianism, and the first of these was a background detail, the latter was a stretch. The script was confusing, which took power away from the ending and wasted a ton of potential. I like it less and less the more I think about it." - 2 Stars
Trash - "While watching Sweet Sweet Lonely Girl, I was struck with a horrible thought. Have I watched too many movies? Have I exhausted all the interesting new ideas, the fresh voices, the innovation, that this is where I've found myself? A 70's-ish throwback, shot on video, intrinsically disposable. A pent up girl caring for an agoraphobic elder has a crush on another girl, but all the emotion and conflict you can imagine from that idea is mysteriously absent. Maybe the filmmaker just wanted to film pretty lesbians and slap a ghost story on it? If you like reading into shit that simply isn't there, you can make up lots of stuff about this movie! But there's nothing there. It's aggravating. The best thing about it is how she eats a pomegranate, which is the wrong way to eat a pomegranate." - 1 Star
Dabbles - "The vibe was really mesmerizing. It felt long but was very 'full' of random stuff. I thought it was really interesting, but confusing." - 3 Stars
The Great Hornito - "I loved the pacing. I thought the acting was great but the ending didn't satisfy me. This felt like a poor man's House of the Devil. I still liked it but I wouldn't recommend it." - 3 Stars
The Berkeley Blazer - "I must warn the general viewer: if you're not on board with where this film is going in the first thirty minutes you should probably ditch this party. SSLG establishes a tone and sticks with it; you will not be crowd-pleased until an abruptly intense conclusion that makes events of the film ambiguous is possibly silly ways (for what it's worth I prefer a supernatural reading). If you are aligned with the Blazer, however, you will easily overlook the rough spots and appreciate the way SSLG grips superficially small details in its universe and, through skillful editing and sound design, gives them compelling narrative power." - 4 Stars
Prang-69 - "I dug the 70's aesthetic and thought it was solidly spooky overall. Otherwise, I don't really know what happened in the final act... is there a metaphor in here for being gay/coming out? Sexual awakening? Even take as a pure narrative with no symbolism, still don't understand the mechanics of the finale." - 2.5 Stars
The Impostor - "Sweet Sweet Lonely Girl is a twisted slow burn psychodrama. Each scene progresses nicely to the next and is beautifully shot. The fragile lonely girl Adele meets alluring and mysterious Beth and that's where things get intense. We slowly see Adele become somewhat corrupted and falling deeper into the dark side. As Adele becoming more tempted and enticed by Beth really intrigued me, especially because of how eerie and creepy it became as the film progressed. While the film builds tension well and captivates you the final act fell flat for me. I'm still deciding if ending makes sense or was it just rushed. Overall Sweet Sweet Lonely Girl is a well filmed, chillingly eerie drama and I enjoyed it." - 3.5 Stars
The Overlook Theatre Final Rating*
(Below is for after you've seen the film)
I wasn't really ready to enjoy what seemed like just another throwback 70's piece but I ended up adoring this ethereal jaunt. Rather than some ersatz House of the Devil, SSLG is a spectral mood piece and morality play where we meet a girl named Adele who starts taking care of a shut-in aunt at the behest of her mercenary mother. For most of the film we are dissolved into Adele's personal experience of her aunt's mysterious VC Andrews house and the surrounding hamlet that she explores while running errands. While wandering, Adele becomes infatuated with bad-influence Beth, a local beauty whose friendship leads good Adele morally and spiritually astray with deliciously wicked smiles and sultry charisma. At one point Beth remarks that Adele's life is similar to Jane Eyre's. The comparison is inviting and appropriate: Brontë's novel not only has superficial similarities to SSLG but both thematically focus on the moral journey of its isolated, independent young woman. Unlike its Victorian counterpart, this story wants to examine the gradual moral corruption of its heroine via her toxic infatuation. While the mystery of the aunt and the spectral machinations aren't what I'd call red herrings or McGuffins, the central struggle of this narrative is the piecemeal corruption of its main character. Olivier's Hamlet opens up with the its own quote which came to mind as I watched Adele's fall:
"Or by some habit that too much o'erleavens
The form of plausive manners—that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature’s livery or fortune’s star,
Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo)
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of evil
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal."
Adele's particular fault is her willingness to please and impress Beth. As she entrenches herself more deeply into a degraded integrity, we see Adele's internal self struggle, she hesitates but makes choices that directly harm other people. Of course, Adele's transgressions could have been liberating and empowering in a different context except that she puts her innocence in the hands of people who don't reciprocate her caring and she compromises her own identity for what turns out to be an empty prize. At the same time we empathize because we too are seduced by Beth, we too want to escape the lonely, spooky house our aunt hides in and we want freedom from poverty and dysfunctional family dynamics for Adele, we want her to meet a nice girl and move to San Francisco to open a shop in the Haight selling hand-knit sweaters, but of course we instead witness how dreams can bring us nightmares if we let them blind our eyes. Whoever Beth ultimately is in the film world, she is a siren beckoning Adele. It's also where I hold back a bit from praising this film's aesthetic and give pause: I'm not giving this one full stars because I worry that it's a little too pious, or at least it could easily be misconstrued as such. People could easily use this film as a validation of their prejudices about sex , homosexuality, or family. One doesn't get the impression that such stances are the views of the filmmaker but I worry that SSLG doesn't do enough to discourage such a reading. Nonetheless, while I'm not sure how authentic the relationship between Beth and Adele plays for female viewers, I found their doomed dalliance compelling even outside of my own heteronormative male sensibilities (i.e. juvenile fantasies), because as a viewer you suspect (correctly) that Beth is herself bored and lonely and decides to play with this smitten admirer. All this unspools like a dream that --despite rotor-dial phones and classic cars-- feels remote from any particular time (it's definitely America, though), and this is a big part of what makes SSLG so watchable. I must warn the general viewer: if you're not on board with where this film is going in the first thirty minutes you should probably ditch this party. SSLG establishes a tone and sticks with it; you will not be crowd-pleased until an abruptly intense conclusion that makes events of the film ambiguous is possibly silly ways (for what it's worth I prefer a supernatural reading). If you are aligned with the Blazer, however, you will easily overlook the rough spots and appreciate the way SSLG grips superficially small details in its universe and, through skillful editing and sound design, gives them compelling narrative power.
-Berkeley Blazer
The Overlook Theatre materialized in a residence for a screening on 6/1/2017
*Based on the star ratings turned in by character reviewers, others viewed and got to "Dislike" or "Like" but that does not affect the rating.
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