Alexander the Last

I guess I’m a little behind the curve, because there’s a new genre out there that I hadn’t heard about (although I have seen a few of the films within it). It’s called “mumblecore,” and is characterized as extremely low-budget films, shot on camcorders, on sets that are practical locations (mostly apartments) and are largely improvisational. The stories, where not a lot happens, concern twentysomethings in the void following college graduation, usually those with a somewhat artistic or academic bent.

One of the major directors of this form is Andrew Bujalski, and I’ve seen and liked immensely his Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation. I hadn’t seen anything by Joe Swanberg, another director of this ilk, until I watched Alexander the Last. It premiered at the recent SXSW festival, and is also available on Comcast’s On Demand, where I saw it.

The film is very much in the spirit of mumblecore. It’s about a young actress, played by Jess Weixler, who is married to a musician (Justin Rice, who was the lead in Mutual Appreciation). He goes on tour, and she gets a part in a play. She develops a crush on her leading man (Barlow Jacobs), which is further complicated by the fact that she has set him up with her sister (Amy Seimetz) and they’re sleeping together. Jacobs is also crashing at Weixler’s apartment, and the play that they are in requires them to engage in amorous clinches.

The topic of an infatuation with someone who is not your spouse was the plot of Mutual Appreciation as well, and as with that film there is no adultery, just a crisis of conscience when you realize that you can be attracted to someone who is not your significant other. When Rice returns from tour and picks up on Weixler’s crush, he has a mild flirtation with another musician, which plays out only as the two of them making music together (literally). The action of this film, as with Bujalski’s work, is between the lines, requiring the viewer to be thoughtful. It’s the anti-Iron Man.

Swanberg is the credited screenwriter, but also gives “additional material by” credit to his entire cast, which suggests that there’s a lot of improvisation is going on. Whatever the circumstance, the film is a pleasure to experience. Weixler, who was also very good in Teeth, could be a star in the making (she looks like a young Helen Hunt–hopefully she avoids her career path). The movie is also pretty damn sexy, with some steamy love scenes (including a cleverly edited sequence when Jacobs has sex with Seimetz, which is intercut with a rehearsal of lovemaking with Weixler).

I should add that the trend of indie films being released simultaneously on cable systems is a good one. The days of art houses may be numbered. I live in a major college town on the East Coast, so I have two nearby, but there are some films that never make it here. If you are a cineaste and live in the hinterlands, where you have to drive half an hour even to see Paul Blart, Mall Cop, and don’t like to to wait for the DVD, this system is ideal. My system has IFC films, (I hope to watch Hunger next, and surely Tokyo Sonata is sure to come) and they lately added Magnolia (the Great Buck Howard is also available). It’s a great lifeline for movies that might otherwise be shown in only a handful of theaters across the country. For a movie like Alexander the Last, there’s not a lot lost by watching it on a small screen, it’s not Lawrence of Arabia. And I can