band-aid-movie

Band Aid ★★★

Band Aid is getting a lot of good press because it was shot with an all-female crew. I couldn’t say whether this is actually the first film ever to do this (I would guess that it isn’t), but it’s still a feat worth sharing with the world, if at the very least it’ll help people see this bright, charming little indie. Band Aid is the feature film debut for writer-director-actress Zoe Lister-Jones, a comedic performer who’s written a handful of scripts and here finally gets a crack at directing. The film is very much part of the contemporary indie film aesthetic; a relationship drama with a good amount of laughs and its fair share of tears. Lister-Jones plays the lead role of Anne, a writer whose professional downturn has turned her into a Los Angeles Uber driver. Anne is married to Ben (Adam Pally), an artist whose own career misfortune has left him only with freelance graphic design work, which is just his fancy version of unemployment. Anne and Ben are both attractive, funny individuals beaten down by life’s twists and turns which has left their marriage in shambles.

Their constant fighting has become incredibly exhausting, but when they decide to turn that angry energy into music, they suddenly think they may have found a way to save their marriage. Enlisting their peculiar neighbor Dave (Fred Armisan) to play the drums, Anne and Ben begin fighting through song, inadvertently creating Earthy pop lyrics that they play in quarter-full open mic nights throughout Los Angeles. This course is the only form of couples’ therapy that seems to work for them, but as they begin to realize the potential of their pop-rock force, they also realize that not all of their problems can be fixed through song. Despite the very premise of the film’s script – that Anne and Ben fundamentally can’t get along – Lister-Jones and Pally have quite the chemistry together, both fully creating the reality of a hollowed-out relationship, a marriage stretched thin by disappointment and bad luck. Best of all, the two actors have a spectacular knack for showing the glimpses of love beneath the anguish, and showing the difference between poisonous fighting, and a love worth fighting for.

Band Aid sometimes feels like it has to be sweet, like it has to un-Blue Valentine itself to show its uniqueness. There’s nothing innately original about Lister-Jones’ dissection of the toll of human companionship, but she does prove herself to be deft at the details of human capabilities, both as a filmmaker and an actress. I wish I could say that the all-female crew crafted some of the best filmmaking I’ve seen this year, but Band Aid goes a long way toward showing that they didn’t have to; that any group of people coming together to make a film this remarkably funny and poignant is achieving something, and this time that group is all women. Fred Armisan arrives in the film to give it exactly what Armisan is so good at giving – odd but sincere laughs – but I bet you wouldn’t also expect him to deliver a rocking drum solo at the film’s midpoint. So, I highly recommend checking out this smart relationship drama – I’m sure you’ll get more than you expected.

 

Writen and Directed by Zoe Lister-Jones