Coming to NYC’s Rooftop Films this Friday, July 19: I HATE MYSELF :)
Joanna Arnow’s study of a bad relationship and worse decisions makes its official world premiere at Rooftop Films. It held a sneak preview screening at the LES* Film Festival last month, where it picked up an audience award.
Arnow, an insecure, somewhat-hipster 20something filmmaker, is sort of dating James, an obnoxious, intentionally insensitive poet who runs a cafe/performance space in Harlem. Possessed of an outsized personality that more than makes up for Arnow’s meekness, James deliberately provokes and alienates his patrons with racially charged language, and treats her like an afterthought. Her seemingly natural response – to film their “relationship” as a means to determine if she really should be with this abrasive asshole – gives this unusual project its shape and purpose. For her part, Arnow comes off as needy and annoying, yet possessed of a self-critical eye that forces viewers to wonder if she’s being impossibly candid and vulnerable, or instead has carefully calculated a persona that calls into question if this is fiction, nonfiction, or something inbetween – signaled by the film’s titular smileyface. Arnow’s complex approach to self-portraiture (or self-caricature?) comes to the fore in her interactions with her parents, who she forces to watch incredibly uncomfortable, sexually explicit footage, angering them enough to launch into a brilliant criticism of their daughter. Unlike any other figures in the film – such as Arnow’s friend/editor, appearing naked for no discernible reason – her parents leave a stark impression, precisely because they appear sane and have normal responses to untoward behavior. Independently mining similar terrain as Lena Dunham’s GIRLS, but with a decidedly blunter edge, Arnow has crafted a grotesquely compelling, if often perplexing and undeniably self-indulgent, self-portrait of young adulthood.
what (not) to doc 