Self Made

Shira Geffen was on TV explaining that although she knows it's customary to say what a film is about in a single sentence, she can't say clearly what this film of her own is about. But fools rush in, so I'll say that the gist is in what the protagonist, an artist, is heard saying about her own work: that it explores what happens when people confront the impossibility of undoing what they've done. In this particular case, a woman who can't live with what she's done breaks out of herself-- into amnesia, to begin with. Her adventures, absurd and occasionally amusing, are interleaved with those of an Arab counterpart. Naturally we expect them to cross paths, and they do; but some other narrative conventions are violated and we're left to wonder whether this is the way that Geffen's inspiration works or whether she is trying to pass off a failure to achieve proper narrative as a leap into higher art beyond it. The audience I was with seemed pleased by each episode but disappointed that the episodes didn't add up. Other than the plot, the backgrounds must be remarked on-- some strikingly peppered expanses of color and of grey, and some Beckettesque desert nothingness with a border-crossing in the middle like one of those free-standing doors in a Warner Brothers cartoon landscape. All in all, I found the movie pleasing and somewhat similar to Geffen's previous film (Jellyfish) although unhappier behind its flashes of wackiness.