Perspective

Greg (Ryan Scott Self) lost his fiancée when he couldn’t match her religious faith. Now he’s written a script based on the relationship, and is going to direct the movie. But the path of indie filmmaking is paved with thorns, as he is plagued by demands from the backers for inappropriate casting, more sex, edgier language, and so on. His ex isn’t too happy about the movie being made in the first place, too.

The film takes the form of a mockumentary. We are supposedly watching the behind-the-scenes doc shot by a camera crew following Greg around as he struggles to get his vision up on the screen. There doesn’t seem to have been a compelling need to adopt this fiction in this case, and the stylistic attempts at realism wind up underlining the improbabilities of the story. An indie film director worrying about landing a PG-13 rating? A scene with a hack script doctor is amusing, but would make more sense if the unfortunate Greg were working on a mainstream release. Furthermore, the plot is too meandering and pedestrian. That the movie industry is a difficult place is hardly a revelation, and so Cinema Salvation is ultimate a very nice, but also rather anodyne, film. Still, Self is a pleasant screen presence, one who engages the audience’s sympathy. We root for him, even if the material fails fully to engage us.