By Tom and Marilyn Jozwik
HE: “Scotch Tension boasts camera work that brings out the beauty of rural Wisconsin. Unfortunately, the Milwaukee Film Festival selection, written and directed by Grant Brown and Samuel Kasper, also “boasts” a maddeningly meandering storyline that features some unlikable characters and unintelligible symbolism. If there was a definitive point to this production, I have yet to figure it out.
Plotwise, a pretty but very moody (“I’m not in a good head space right now”) young seamstress with a decent steady boyfriend takes a puzzling shine to a taciturn handyman. Seamstress and handyman become a couple; subsequently uncouple; eventually reunite. Considerable booze consumption contributes to characters’ dissatisfaction along the way. (Could the evils of alcoholism be the movie’s theme?)
“Scotch Tension” (the title names a spinning wheel component) stars Erika Sorenson as seamstress Em and Logan Scott as handyman Noah. The acting is satisfactory, but the characters are less than that. A sometimes eerie soundtrack, and a hard-to-listen-to guitar solo at closing credits time, contribute precious little.
Grade: C-
SHE: I think you were a little harsh. This film had a lot going for it, but suffered from an uneven story and editing.
The opening is promising. It feels like the start of a PBS Masterpiece Theatre series as the camera lovingly focuses on a spinning wheel from all angles. You see a sneakered-foot working the pedal, spokes of the wheel whirring around and the wheel’s operator, a young woman named Em, played by Erika Sorenson, who has a sweet, gamine look that the camera loves.
Cinematographer Derek Schmitt has created a wonderful atmosphere around the spinning wheel and coaxes the camera into another lovely scene as Em explains to the enigmatic Noah, a handyman who lives in a shack nearby to whom she’s attracted, how the wheel works. But the story about Em and her restlessness and confusion with her love life – steady buddy Nathan or unknown Noah – and her career path – the limited income hobby or a steady city job – put her in a near constant state of angst. The angelic look of her at the wheel is short-lived as she wrestles with life’s decisions that take her from the small-town world of northern Wisconsin to an unsatisfying stint in “the city”.
Again, the best part of this movie is Schmitt’s keen eye for atmosphere, including scenic country roads, snowy woods and a midnight dip in a Wisconsin body of water.
Grade: B-