Light as Feathers

Utterly, hopelessly amateurish from start to finish, Light as Feathers follows Polish teenager Eryk (Eryk Walny) as he spends his days tormenting animals and raping his exceedingly young neighbor – with the plotless narrative weaving in the exploits of Eryk’s well-meaning yet utterly clueless mother (who seems to want to be Eryk’s friend more than his parent). It’s clear immediately that first-time filmmaker Rosanne Pel has absolutely no business behind the camera, as Light as Feathers suffers from a pervasively incompetent sensibility that’s compounded by Pel’s inability to even fleetingly catch the viewer’s interest – with the movie’s documentary-like atmosphere immediately rendered moot by an emphasis on aggravating and frequently unpleasant happenings. (There is, for example, an ongoing emphasis on the mistreatment of the family cat, as Eryk manhandles it for his own amusement and an older relative slaps it fairly hard to shoo it away.) The perpetually objectionable vibe is certainly reflected quite keenly in the portrayal of the worthless central character, and it’s impossible not to wonder just what Pel was thinking crafting an entire movie around so obnoxious and hateful a protagonist (and it certainly doesn’t help that Walny delivers as flat and emotionless a performance as one could imagine). By the time the bizarre, incestuous ending rolls around, Light as Feathers has certainly confirmed its place as a misfire and trainwreck of epic proportions and it’s impossible not to wonder what programmer Michèle Maheux was thinking when she incorporated it into this year’s lineup.

no stars out of ****

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