[VIFF 2019] REVIEW: 'Anne at 13,000 Ft.' shakes and tilts, but still doesn't move very much
Deragh Campbell stars in Anne at 13,000 Ft, directed by Kazik Radwanski.
Anne is an unlikeable character. She can’t stay focused on her job. She doesn’t treat her friends very well. She doesn’t listen. She plays the victim card a lot. And she’s in obvious pain. At what point do we forgive her?
Anne at 13,000 Ft. was produced on a reported budget of just $200,000, and this character study is almost entirely driven by Deragh Campbell’s strong performance. Her eyes are manic, her actions are impulsive and her reasons are illogical. She’s a strain on herself and nearly everyone she touches: her best friend, her boyfriend and her family, and a constant thorn for her co-workers at the daycare where she works. Anne’s only escape is skydiving, the only place where she feels free. There’s nothing around her, just the blue sky and a rush of wind that makes her feel a little more alive and a little less boxed in.
There’s one shark-obsessed kid at the daycare to whom she feels most attached, but no other kid connects with her. She can’t seem to listen to reason, and the more she spins out of control, the more unbearable she becomes. Director Kazik Radwanski opted for a handheld camera with extreme close-ups to impress Anne’s claustrophobia on the viewer, and it works well because only at the end of the film do we realize how tense our muscles have become at the end of its 75-minute runtime.
It feels long because we want to stretch out our arms and give Anne a good shake, to yell at her: “COME BACK TO REALITY!!!” Radwanski succeeds in building the intensity, but where it falls short is Anne’s curious lack of transformation. She’s not very different from when we first meet her, and her behavior and subsequent breakdown asks more questions than it answers. The pace also lags, and too often we're left spinning our wheels in the mud. It works as a proper proxy for Anne, but as an audience it was difficult to place in context. We never quite learn what moves her and what she thinks, only that her on-screen presence is a ticking time bomb.
She pushes the good people away in nearly every scene, and in some cases frustratingly so because she fails to see herself as part of the problem. She slams the glass of her mother’s enclosed fireplace after being told not to play with the fire. She’s constantly looking at her texts when she’s supposed to be working. She throws an empty paper cup at her co-worker after being asked to throw it away because it’s “funny.” She tries to escape from a moving car after her friend attempts to help.
The end result is a slightly frustrating watch, in which the film effectively conveys Anne’s depth of struggles, but without any effective conclusion or observation. We get it; Anne is struggling and she needs help, but we also needed to see things move forward.
Anne at 13,000 Ft gets two and a half stars out of four.
