I’m always cautious when I approach a low-budget independent film. It’s not that I don’t expect them to be good. I have found countless gems over the years that not only exceeded my expectations but have been placed on a must-watch-again list. The thing I’m most cautious about is the level of ambition a limited experience director might shoot for. Obviously there has to be a great amount of drive and ambition to even try to make a movie. I know many filmmakers think reviewers are frustrated and failed filmmakers. I’m not one of them. I have a great deal of respect for anyone who puts together a story and a crew and often risks their own resources to make a film. I’m talking about the ambition in the film itself. As I was watching Cicada Song for the first time, I started to worry about just that. This is a very ambitious film that tries to tackle a lot of things at one time. Yet writer/director managed to pull it off and deliver a film far more compelling than I was expecting.
The idea appears simple on the surface, but it is not. Karen is played by Lyndsey Lantz. She’s had to hold her head up because she has several strikes against her in this rural setting. She’s gay and appears Hispanic and suffers the barbs from both designations. She manages a farm operation for a couple who aren’t necessarily what they appear to be. If I’m being vague here, it’s because there is so much nuance to this story that telling you too much will risk ruining what the film works so hard to accomplish. Karen first hears that a young girl has gone missing. She starts to ask questions and discovers the missing child might be related to one a year ago. Before long, her lover Annabelle (Mesa) has also gone missing. She ends up asking the wrong questions and eventually left for dead in the middle of a wood, where she shows incredible strength and determination to survive. Without revealing too much, I can tell you that you shouldn’t be too quick to figure out the good guys from the bad guys. Things aren’t always what they seem. Lyndsey Lantz does a fine job as Karen and has to carry a lot of the weight of the story both in the “present” and flash-forward scenes. Other standouts in the cast are Kim Reed as the owner of the farm Karen manages and Jenny Mesa, who plays Annabelle.
Again, this is the kind of film that is best left with little of the plot revealed. The film’s style and ambition are what captivated me throughout. Writer and director Michael Starr sprinkles the film with moments of Karen picking herself up and roaming the wilderness, obviously injured and disoriented. Starr uses these sprinkled moments as beats to the film’s rhythm, and if you’re paying attention, he’s telling you something’s happened here in the story or is about to. He manages to cut across plenty of social issues. He doesn’t preach or beat you over the head. I love filmmakers who trust their audience to “get it”. Others make a point by telling the “other side” how evil they are. Starr does none of those things and his message is that much stronger for it. You can’t get someone to hear your argument if you start off by telling them how evil they are because they might not agree. The film takes place in locations in L.A. and Missouri, and there is a relatively large cast for such a limited-budget attempt. How he fits all of this into a small-budget package is a bit of a mystery to me, and I had a chance to talk to him about it all. He still manages to deliver some solid production values and even finds enough money to include a lot of music in the film which he cleverly uses to enhance the changing moods of the film. In most cases a director in his position would consider themselves fortunate to get to pick one or two things from that list. Somehow Cicada Song delivers all of them without compromise. And he doesn’t bloat the film with an unnecessarily long running time. I don’t mind even a bad film, but I hate when filmmakers waste so much more of my time than they needed in order to satisfy some ego or blind ambition. It’s a tight story with nicely laid out beats and characters that appear real and multi-dimensional. All of the budget is on the screen. Someone must have told him, “Don’t spend it all in one place.”
