Magdalen McElhinney hangs out in bars and makes her living telling stories to her fellow patrons for a fee. In the end, the stories all seem to find their source in a filmmaker named Andrew, who is probably her father. Before I go any further, I want to say I have never met writer/director Andrew Repasky McElhinney. I do not know anyone who has met him. I believe he is a Philadelphia filmmaker, and I have been to Philadelphia. That's about the only connection I can think of between us. I point this out because I want you to know I harbor no personal animosity toward him. I hope one day he will be a very successful lawyer or doctor or waiter or cab driver, anything, mind you, except a filmmaker. A law should be enacted to keep him at least fifty yards away from motion picture equipment. This film has to be seen to be believed. Technically speaking, Magdalen isn't bad as a first effort. Alix D. Smith, who plays Magdalen, isn't bad either. Neither is the story itself. I'm sure John Sayles could fashion a terrific, insightful story around the heroine. Wait a second. Scratch insightful. That's the problem with this film. It offers way too much insight into Mr. Andrew Repasky McElhinney. Way too much! In retrospect, it is easy to see why he gave his lead character his own name. This film is about him. And him only. In fact, he even plays Andrew, the famous filmmaker, who is probably the father of the lead actress. This is particularly interesting because Alix Smith is at least twice as old as Mr. McElhinney, who looks like a slightly chubby twelve-year-old boy. (McElhinney tries to justify this conceit by staging this meeting in a dream sequence.) Mr. McElhinney's long monologue is jaw-droppingly hilarious. Alix Smith deserves an Oscar for keeping a straight face during it. What ego! What misguided self-importance! What stupidity! What pretentiousness! Ten years from now Mr. McElhinney will look back on that scene and cringe in embarrassment -- if he isn't cringing already. This film, built around the theme that an artist, no matter how unsuccessful, must be respected because he/she has god-like power over the world they create, is one of the most pretentious pieces of cinematic masturbation I have ever experienced. Oh the humanity!
7 Reviews
5.99 in a discount bin... a diamond in the rough.
a-psychlical23 February 2007
Warning: Spoilers
This film shows a way of storytelling that has all but disappeared from modern life: stock characters and situations, the interplay between the teller and the listener that keeps these elements in perpetual kaleidoscopic rearrangement, the desire to hear parts of your own life retold as you would have wished them, or simply to hear them in someone else's words.
Magdalen, an attractive storyteller all dressed in black, takes her seat at the bar and lets the world revolve around the gravity of her creations. Her demeanor, her tone of voice are as steady and matter of fact as the recurring sound of her heels striking the ground, which I found a welcome change from all the emotional extremities on the screen and the television today.
This is not to say that Ms. Smith's tone is without variation, merely that she is portraying a worldly someone that has learned just how much you can reasonably expect from the people around you. With a little patience, I found myself forced to approach the main character as I would anyone I meet for the first time, and was all the more receptive to the changes that came later: the surprise of her finding herself utterly disarmed by the naivety of an older man, the frustration of being confronted by someone who knows the stories as well as she does and can't help but interject.
These gentle differences between Magdalen's control of voice and posture and the perfectly human moments when this control is stripped away by the unexpected were as much the heart of Alix D. Smith's performance as the irreconcilable differences between the fluid, dreamlike art of face-to-face storytelling and the static, moments-trapped-behind-glass art of cinema was, for me, the essence of the film. It is in these juxtapositions that Ms. Smith and Mr. Repasky McElhinney show the nature of their abilities with their respective crafts.
Again, this film is quite the departure from the current fashion of being flung headlong into the personal lives of characters you've never met before, forced to decide whether you're for them or against them. If you are accustomed to emotional roller coasters, but were looking for something different and were fortunate enough to find this movie, try to remind yourself that life occurs at its own pace, and that occasionally, someone manages to capture it on film in all its simplicity.
Magdalen, an attractive storyteller all dressed in black, takes her seat at the bar and lets the world revolve around the gravity of her creations. Her demeanor, her tone of voice are as steady and matter of fact as the recurring sound of her heels striking the ground, which I found a welcome change from all the emotional extremities on the screen and the television today.
This is not to say that Ms. Smith's tone is without variation, merely that she is portraying a worldly someone that has learned just how much you can reasonably expect from the people around you. With a little patience, I found myself forced to approach the main character as I would anyone I meet for the first time, and was all the more receptive to the changes that came later: the surprise of her finding herself utterly disarmed by the naivety of an older man, the frustration of being confronted by someone who knows the stories as well as she does and can't help but interject.
These gentle differences between Magdalen's control of voice and posture and the perfectly human moments when this control is stripped away by the unexpected were as much the heart of Alix D. Smith's performance as the irreconcilable differences between the fluid, dreamlike art of face-to-face storytelling and the static, moments-trapped-behind-glass art of cinema was, for me, the essence of the film. It is in these juxtapositions that Ms. Smith and Mr. Repasky McElhinney show the nature of their abilities with their respective crafts.
Again, this film is quite the departure from the current fashion of being flung headlong into the personal lives of characters you've never met before, forced to decide whether you're for them or against them. If you are accustomed to emotional roller coasters, but were looking for something different and were fortunate enough to find this movie, try to remind yourself that life occurs at its own pace, and that occasionally, someone manages to capture it on film in all its simplicity.
Thoughtful 90's art noir that shows the city so well
freddybedlam24 December 2019
ARM constructs a character who is intrepid and unambiguously kindhearted in the surly story selling protagonist played by Alix D. Smith . This film is an intimate artful crafting of hidden lives and shared narrative meanings parsed through humans connecting.
The urban photography is so thoughtfully edited and deployed that the city becomes another character.
The character Andrew is a fascinating vessel for self revelation. What a wonderful film.
Polite Debut
jamesmills-1378912 June 2019
A curious mixture of film noir and cinema verity.
tutt-roberts20 September 2004
Magdalen is a curious mixture of film noir and cinema verity, an effort which will probably be of interest to scholars, in the event that Andrew Repasky McElhinney becomes a cinematic force majeure. The problem with the film is that it never truly focuses on its profoundly intuitive theme--that life is largely illusory, a story made up out of whole cloth. The theme is best expostulated in the dialogue between Magdalen and Andrew, a dream encounter between the filmmaker (as God), and Magdalen (as His creature), in which God hands Magdalen the essence of Himself, to be altered, edited, adapted, or discarded as she sees fit. Beautifully shot in places, with a low bow in the direction of French existentialism and Eugene O'Neill, the film nevertheless lacks the skillful interweaving and truncation of thematic materials in A Chronicle of Corpses. Still, as the chanteuse says, "no regrets".
A smokey sensuous labyrinth of femme agency.
renaefclark24 December 2019
This witty , honest, layered conversational film captures that quintessential intimacy and sense of possibility that were hallmarks of the best of the furtive American Independent cinema in the 90's.
Alix makes you hang on every word of every story she sells. Yet somehow says even more when she isn't talking.
I love the look and feel of this film.
Alix makes you hang on every word of every story she sells. Yet somehow says even more when she isn't talking.
I love the look and feel of this film.
Life is a story we tell ourselves
jungleary24 December 2019
Life is a story made up of other peoples stories and the stories we tell each other about the story we tell ourselves. This film peels back the layers of reality. Weaving its late night magic.
This film is a startling revelation from a 17 year old! How sensitive to the human condition. How brave to share so much of himself.
You wont regret spending time with this cast of characters and the strange little world Andrew Repasky builds for them.
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