LOSER

LOSER is a contemplative, voiceover-driven narrative that will sit with you long after the final credits. Set in the milieu of a Long Island summer, you can feel the sticky humidity, captured beautifully in anamorphic on 16mm film. The sometimes arrhythmic pacing of small details, like inserts of froyo and rubber duckies, subverts flow, giving an off-kilter feeling that underpins even the most comedic moments. Alice’s (Angourie Rice) inner monologue is both achingly familiar and oddly soothing. Writer/director Colleen McGuinness walks the fine line between existential dread and hope. Like driving on a long empty highway through low-hanging fog, the film captures that paradox of being young and having your whole life ahead of you, but having no idea what’s in store or what to look forward to. With 24/7 access in our pockets to violence and bad news, this may be the first generation stripped of the feelings of invincibility that usually accompany coming of age. You can feel that in Alice. Her world may be falling apart around her, but maybe she will learn to love herself a little more within its chaos.

Erin Brown Thomas, Artistic Director