It is nice to see a film that doesn't spoonfeed its audience information to help us understand what's going on, but there is also such a thing as not giving us enough information, as well. Old Joy is a very short film (a mere 76 minutes long) about two old friends (Will Oldham and Daniel London) who go on a day and a half long camping trip in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. We observe, as flies on the wall, the interactions of these two, and it's our job to parcel out the things we learn and try to make something out of all of it. There's just enough information to keep me interested, but in the end, I think I decided that there's just not enough to make me care too much. This is more like Gerry than it is like My Dinner with Andre, but it lacks the beautiful artistic abstraction of Gus Van Sant's film. And the weird homoerotic scene at the end just felt odd and misplaced. I think much as heterosexual men like to imagine that pretty girls all have a little lesbian in them, some heterosexual women fantasize that any two buddies would screw each other if they found themselves alone and naked.
