There's much here that's promising but, for the most part, Love & Tambourines functions as the one film that makes Paper Heart look like a really strong piece of cinema. There's a youthful sense of everything (humor, being, understanding) here that could be mistaken as naivety. But that's okay; this is a movie for young people. The attempts to be wildly creative at every turn, for example, will only work for two kinds of viewers: 1) people who don't know much about cinema; 2) young people (who also probably don't know much about cinema).
I watched the film, like most I'm sure, because I have high hopes for Stephanie Hunt. She's off to a slow start, but I wouldn't be surprised if she's the next half-fiction/half-herself Greta Gerwig sort of actor. She plays awkward very well. She's fun to look at and listen to, even if she only really seems to ever be playing Stephanie Hunt. Looks and charm are on her side. Of all the Friday Night Lights kids, we're rooting for Hunt and co-star Jesse Plemons the most.
Very little happens over director Jeremy Cohen's 70 minute movie aside from a healthy number of attempts to be creative. There's a minor storyline thrown in here and there that's supposed to hold things together, but it doesn't really work. Love & Tambourines is not what Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless was in 1960, but that DIY ambition is definitely present from the first to last frame.
The fact that, when describing the movie they don't even call it what it is (cinéma vérité), is proof that we can't take this movie too seriously. These kids just don't quite know what they're doing yet, but they have an actress from a TV show and they have some modest production gear. You get to see some very young people experimenting with art and narrative. And that's fun. Indulgent and fun. Assuming that Hunt will do more and more in the years to come, Love & Tambourines will be fun to look back on at some point. And hopefully Cohen's ambition eventually meets up with a better understanding of film and narrative. He was smart enough to put the camera on Hunt for most of his 70 minutes, which shows that he does, if anything, have taste. And ambition.
Taste and ambition. And hard work. Throw in a better understanding of his art and you might just have a promising filmmaker.
(Post Script - I watched the film a second time and enjoyed its many creative turns much more. Not a great film, but, considering how modest the production is, definitely some nice work.)
