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USA, 2009, 85 Minute Running Time Genre/Subjects: Coming of Age, Romance, Social Issues, Women's Issues Programs: Contemporary World Cinema, New Directors ShowcaseLanguage: English
DIRECTOR: Gregory Fitzsimmons Producer: Gregory Fitzsimmons , James Francis FlynnEditor: Gregory FitzsimmonsScreenwriter: Gregory FitzsimmonsCinematographer: A.J. Rickert-Epstein, Gregory FitzsimmonsPrincipal Cast: Samantha Simon, Jackie Geary, Brian Sharpe, Scott Lynch-Giddings, Allison Latta, Jeff Garretson
In his directing debut, Gregory Fitzsimmons gives us a detailed portrait of a lost woman-child who drifts out of an unhappy marriage to a Wall Street stockbroker into the drug- and sex-fueled Chicago party scene and onward into the smothering embrace of guitar-strumming Christian fundamentalists. As portrayed by Samantha Simon, the mostly silent Natalie is disturbingly doll-like. “I feel so warm inside,” she announces upon being born again. But we’re not convinced that her search for selfhood is yielding a sense of well-being. Absent a career, lacking in creativity and focus, Natalie steps from one set of fantasies into the next as they rise from the pages of American Woman and Christian Weekly. Directed on a slightly surreal tilt and punctuated by Keegan DeWitt’s minimalist piano score, this affecting look at a woman in a fog that just won’t lift has the stuff of tragicomedy. “Learn to be a nobody,” a preacher advises when she raises a timid question about equality in marriage. But Natalie already knows how to do that: the quietly nagging question is whether she still has the chance to become somebody – other, that is, than a one-time third runner-up in the Miss Ohio Teen pageant.