Thursday, March 13, 2008

SXSW movie review and filmmaker interview: Mary Bronstein for Yeast

Mary may be skinny, but she knows how to put away the fried food. (And throw rocks.)

By John P. Meyer

Mary Bronstein (nee Wall) met her husband, filmmaker Ronald Bronstein, on the set of the movie they brought to SXSW last year: Frownland. When she came up with an idea for her own film, to center on damaging relationships that are maintained purely for convenience (or because it's easier to maintain them than it is to break them off, perhaps), he told her to forge ahead and make the movie herself.

Photo by John P. Meyer

Mary Bronstein: nice person, intense filmmaker

What results is a really disturbing relationship minefield of a film called Yeast, which had its world premiere here in Austin on Monday, March 10. (I saw it during its second screening on March 11.) At times downright hard to sit through, this film might easily have been turned into a dark comedy by someone who had an interest in mainstreaming it for mass consumption, but Mary - not unlike the controller she plays in the film - chose to go the "relentlessly un-self reflective" route (to borrow a phrase used by one of her crew) by keeping the narrative entirely naturalistic. No slapstick here, folks - though there is some slapping (and hitting, and shoving - and rock throwing).

The lead-in/teaser for the film (which was introduced by Mary herself at the screening I attended) is this: are you mired down in a friendship which has turned absolutely toxic?

I mean, I personally have a friend who's mildly bothersome - and no, Warren, I'm not referring to you - but as I began to watch Mary's film I knew there was nothing in my experiential ballpark to compare with her film's nightmare scenario.

Early on in the story - as Mary's character prepares to leave her apartment to embark on a camping trip with the preternaturally annoying character played by Greta Gerwig - we the audience are led to believe that the toxic friend to which the teasers refer will turn out to be Greta. But her character, it turns out, is just a harmless airhead (albeit a demonstrative one) compared to the obsessive-compulsive madwoman portrayed by Mary.

The verbal communication employed in the film - which can best be described as inchoate - will I suppose land it firmly in the trendy realm of mumblecore. Visually, the cinematography employs a great deal of extreme closeup, offering claustrophobic views of characters you'd prefer to be much farther away from. On the physical level, there are (as mentioned) an unsettling number of instances in which characters lash out at each other, either by hitting, shoving or otherwise spontaneously striking and pushing away - it's as if they can't bear to actually tell their emotional tormentor that they want to never set eyes on them again, so they act it out instead.

Interview: Mary Bronstein of Yeast

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My biggest problem with the weltanschauung postulated by the film is that I can't imagine how any characters who end up hating each other this much could have ever hooked up to begin with.

Mary Bronstein sat down with me in the press room at the Austin Convention Center for an interview. I'm glad to report that she's a really friendly and engaging (in a good way) person who even consented to let me leave the room once our interview was over. (Haha.)

As we begin the audio interview (something over 20 minutes in length), she's telling me about all the great food (mostly fried) she's had while here in Austin.

Did I mention she's quite petite? Ah, for the metabolism of youth...

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