On the first day of the festival so far a highlight has been Jake Mahaffey’s WELLNESS which premiered earlier this year at the Rotterdam Film Festival and is the filmmaker’s second feature length film. The film is a quintessential festival film: smart, challenging and very low budget. WELLNESS tells the story of a middle-aged salesman who is trapped in a pyramid scheme, which has consumed him completely. WELLNESS shares many traits with another indie film playing here in Vegas later in the festival, GOLIATH by the Zellner brothers. GOLIATH tells the story of a man whose life is unraveling and who goes off the deep end when his beloved cat disappears. Both films depict men more trapped by their place in society and their professions than defined by them. These two films are also both incredibly funny and soul crushingly bleak at the same time. This complex form of hybridization is difficult to define, call it bleakedy
WELLNESS is a true work of art, complex and challenging, provoking the audience to engage with the film work and to argue the character’s motivations and thoughts. So little is spelled out for the film it contains myriad possibilities within itself. Is the protagonist aware he is being deceived or is own his self-deception even stronger? And what is the significance of the wasps’ nests? (This obsession is a beautiful touch in an already very delicate film.) The final treat comes in the end credits where it was reveled that a relative of the director played the horrific boss in the movie. Whether this was sibling or father of the directors it was an inspired bit of casting and is another example of limited means sometimes leading to surprisingly accomplished filmmaking.
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