Sunday, July 1, 2018

Textural ADHD

Like Me (2017) - Mockler
Screen Shot 2018-07-01 at 1.06.04 PM
A movie made for the ADHD generation? Aptly titled Like Me concerns Kiya (Addison Timlin), a young woman videotaping her misdeeds and putting on the internet for garnering fame. Constantly on the road living in various motel rooms, she is a restless, aimless, lonely soul looking for human connections. After seducing middle aged motel manager Marshall (Larry Fassenden) and taping him on camera, humiliating him and getting one million views on youtube, they become an unlikely captor-captive pair. It works because he says he understands her. It is obvious that Kiya takes on a lot of different roles just to disguise her loneliness and her needs for validation.

Unlike other didactic take on loneliness and isolation in the age of social network, Like Me lets its loose narrative be and compensates it with candy color palette and dizzing edits. Fassenden has become as reliable of a presence in the indie world as Gary Oldman is to the mainstream films now. With all the excess style, I liked Like Me much more than I thought I would. Its textural, rough around the edges aesthetics really works for its there/not there theme. One of the year's best.