In late '90s suburbia, a pair of isolated teens - Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine aka Jack Haven) - bond over their shared appreciation for a late night, young adult TV show called The Pink Opaque.
The show, which is woven throughout the main feature, is clearly inspired by Buffy The Vampire Slayer (it uses the Buffy font for its credits and one of the main characters is called Tara, which then echoes on a meta level when Amber Benson - who played Tara on Buffy - pops in for a brief cameo). But this is Buffy filtered through The Mighty Boosh and directed by David Lynch.
Although Buffy was the strongest influence in my eyes, there were definite shades of Twin Peaks (particularly The Return) in both the show-within-the-film and the 'real world' of Owen and Maddy: the pivotal, central scene taking place in a liminal bar while a band plays in the background (their song featuring the lyric "I Saw The TV Glow").
Just as the The Pink Opaque is about to be cancelled - on a shocking, fifth season cliffhanger - Maddy disappears, leaving behind a burning television in her garden.
Almost a decade later, she returns to find Owen, and tries to convince him that she has been "inside the show" and that their memories of watching it in her basement were false, that they were really the characters they remembered from the show.
I'd been sold on I Saw The TV Glow as a "horror picture" and had been expecting something akin to the wonderful Channel Zero: Candle Cove serving of creepypasta television from 2016.
I was wrong. While there are fleeting elements of unnerving psychological horror, especially in Maddy's powerful speech about her efforts to recreate the season five cliffhanger of The Pink Opaque (so that she could get to "season six"), the art house film's theme is an allegory for the trans experience and a meditation on the nature of reality and how that impacts identity.
The final act follows Owen as he grows into adulthood, but there is an increasing feeling that - while he represses it - he is living a lie, the whole experience with The Pink Opaque serving as a metaphor for his confused sexuality.
Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw The TV Glow is mesmerically shot, drifting in and out of the TV show as it skims through Owen's life like the chapters on a DVD.
While the gamer in me was quite fixated on the mythology of The Pink Opaque (with its 'big bad' Mr Melancholy and his demonic henchbeings), the emotional performances of the two leads held my attention throughout.
I Saw The TV Glow wasn't quite what I was expecting, but I didn't mind: it's still a weird and powerful piece of 'coming of age' cinema. John Hughes this ain't!
No comments:
Post a Comment