I'm most enthusiastic about "Inside/Out" by the redoubtable Rob
Tregenza, who returns in this movie to the long-take mode of "Talking
to Strangers," his fabled 1988 schizodrama, now available on video
from Parallel Films, his Maryland-based production and distribution
company. Like that earlier picture, "Inside/Out" follows a minimal
storyline with a deftly moving camera that films the action in
lengthy shots of extraordinary gracefulness and virtuosity. The
effect of these fluid, unblinking takes is to heighten both the
gritty realism and the dreamlike delirium built into the bare-bones
plot about inmates and authorities in an out-of-the-way psychiatric
hospital. Tregenza is a true master of cinematography, and
"Inside/Out" is worth a close look by anyone with a serious interest
in cinema as a visual art. Once again the weak link in his aesthetic
is his handling of the performers, many of whom are visiby acting in
a movie that must be about sheer *behaving* if it's about anything at
all. But this caveat aside, I hasten to reaffirm that filmmaking of
this high order doesn't come along very often.
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