Images courtesy of Buffalo8
DISFLUENCY– 4 STARS
Our introduction to the main character of Disfluency depicts a female college student appearing to have quite the hungover morning. Played by Libe Barer of Among the Beasts, Jane is arriving to an all-important final exam before a stern professor (veteran TV actress Molly Hagan) disheveled and discombobulated from whatever transpired the night before. The outside observers shake their heads in embarrassment for Jane, especially when she bombs the exam and fails to graduate. In this moment of academic collapse, Jane retreats for the summer to her family’s cushy lakehouse in Commerce Township, Michigan to re-charge herself and her priorities.
Back home, Jane is embraced by her gregarious Irish twin sister Lacey (Libe’s own sibling Ariela Barer of How to Stop a Pipeline and Marvel’s Runaways), who’s planned out a nonchalant summer. The two happily partake in the campfire beers, daytime sunbathing, rolled joints, and shared nose piercings of this circle of social butterflies consisting of the Instagram-addicted Kennedy (Emily the Criminal’s Kimiko Singer), tagalong buddy Dylan (Travis Tope of Men, Women & Children), and Jane’s old crush Jordan (Dylan Arnold of Oppenheimer). Things look up for the speech major when Jane assembles a thesis studying the casual Gen Z language of her peers for a makeup final presentation. To anyone who asks about her academic collapse at hand, including her disappointed parents (TV actors Ricky Wayne and Diana DeLaCruz), Jane answers with spoken deflections and a shrugged lack of excuses. It makes one wonder how bad it could have been?
LESSON #1: THERE’S MORE TO IT THAN ANYONE REALIZES– The answer to that query comes to reveal itself one flickered memory at a time in Disfluency. Different and seemingly benign words, settings, indelible objects, and, most alarmingly, moments of physical proximity raise Jane’s anxiety as well as our own. Small remembrances of alcohol-fueled disorientation are interrupted with sparks of increasingly more damaging imagery suggesting something far more dreadful than merely an off-night were our good girl Jane wore the lampshade after partaking in a little too much collegiate social fun. The hints are grim.
As the flashbacks thicken the ugly and sordid details, every call for caution is correct, and every sincere attempt at concern is warranted. But, with every chewed fingernail of unchecked nerves, Jane refuses to talk or share any shred of explanation. Through its sobering effort to present an always-successful-until-now young woman carrying unhealed pain, Disfluency sheds light on an ominous emotional burden far too many people have experienced and far too many people have sought to carry silently.
LESSON #2: IMAGINE LIVING WITH THIS ON YOUR HEART– Thanks to our viewpoint of dramatic irony into Jane’s headspace in Disfluency, our sympathy corrects that first impression of an irresponsible kid who made a dumb and supposedly preventable series of choices. Our gaze couldn’t have been more wrong, as Jane endures the triggers and reminders popping up everywhere that give her pauses and shivers. Since we know what no one else around her does, Disfluency creates strong empathy for a woman that age even trying to move forward, academically or personally, after such a violation. As an actress, Libe Barer shoulders, for all intents and purposes, that cinematic scar tissue in a very powerful fashion with an astounding arc of discovered resolve.
LESSON #3: TELL SOMEONE– During what’s supposed to be a carefree break, the fog of malaise and agony grows within Jane. She stays in bed and dodges her sister and friends more often. When she ventures into town on several occasions, we see her stare across the street from her favorite ice cream spot to the police station with insufficient courage to report what happened to her those weeks and months later. The right answer is to indeed tell someone, report it, and not just play the “let me handle it” card Jane does.
LESSON #4: THE DEFINITION OF DISFLUENCY– Yet, how can you do that when you cannot find the trust in others or get the right words out verbally? The film, written and directed by Anna Baumgarten expanding on her 2018 short film of the same name for her feature-length debut, mirrors that difficultly and goes out of its way (as this very review has as well) to not label the foreboding transgression until its spoken into existence by Jane herself. This is when Disfluency leans on its titular term of speech disruptions caused by nervousness, stress, and fatigue that Jane is well-versed in.
The more clinical side of Disfluency brings forward the linchpin presence of Jane’s former high school classmate Amber Jackson, played by 13 Reasons Why’s Chelsea Alden. Unlike the happy-go-lucky kids that lived it up in college, she’s a beleagured single mother in denial of having a deaf toddler. Using her college skillset, Jane arranges to teach her sign language. Soon enough, the two find reciprocated patience and confiding care in each other away from the usual community judgment. In their scenes together, Alden adds even more resolve to what Barer already brought to the forefront.
To even broach the subject of alleged sexual assault (there I said it) itself requires certain bravery from Disfluency. Compared to other films that deal with those incendiary incidents, acrimony and fierce he-said/she-said hostility are not the leading dramatic power sources for Barer and the rest of the ensemble. Rather, Anna Baumgarten approached Disfluency with uncommon delicacy on all fronts. First off, neither the event or the perpetrator are completely shown, relying on the suggestion from the shards of Jane’s visions to be enough for the audience. On the other side, Baumgarten wisely accepts that the aftermath of traumas on this level are never fully fixed in one tidy movie. Those astute and excellent creative choices put strength on the restorative over the reactive, because, in the end, things can get better, and that journey has led to over 10 festival jury prizes Anna’s important film.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1275)
