It
seems strange to name your town after a legendarily sacked and subsequently
lost city, but the residents of Troy, New York voted to do exactly that in
1789. They must have thought it sounded more Dutch than Pompeii. Over two
hundred years later, the Hudson River burg might be going the way of its
classical forerunner, but the end will come through mysterious meteors than a
horse. Then again, a weird equine may yet be involved in Rania Attieh &
Daniel Garcia’s relentlessly ambiguous H.
(trailer
here),
which screens during MoMA’s annual Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You
series.
This
is Troy, New York, so it must have a few Helens. There are at least two. We
will meet the older, retired Helen first. She is happily married to the not so
happily married Roy. Helen is the youtube video-posting leader of Troy’s circle
of “reborn baby” enthusiasts, who care for their lifelike vinyl dolls as if
they really were infants. It is sort of like the Tamagotchi craze, except even
creepier. Roy puts up with it stoically, but he is clearly not crazy about it.
The
younger Helen is the pregnant artistic and life partner of fellow performance
artist Alex. Evidently having nasty fights is part of their alleged creative
process. However, younger Helen is starting to realize that portends bad things
for when the baby arrives. Suddenly a meteor or some such cosmic event hits
Troy—and all bets are off. Reports are sketchy, but apparently many locals have
fallen into somnambulist state. They felt the urge walk into the wilderness,
losing consciousness in the process. Younger Helen might be susceptible to the
phenomenon, just like Roy.
Attieh
& Garcia’s Homeric Troy references never really add up to anything, but it
is not for a lack of belaboring them. Tonally, this film is a baffling
mish-mash. Frankly, it is hard to say whether older Helen’s reborn obsession is
a wildly awkward distraction or necessary groundwork to make us believe, all
things being equal, Roy would rather shuffle through the forest like a zombie.
At least there is some lived-in credibility to their relationship. In contrast,
younger Helen and Alex are nauseatingly annoying. When we first encounter them,
we see a series of their photos in which they have been made up to look
battered and bruised, because domestic violence is only important when it is
the subject of hipster art.
It
is a shame H. is so maddeningly
pretentious, because some of the apocalyptic sequences are really unnerving,
precisely because they are so subtly rendered. Likewise, Alex Weston’s
classical-ambient themes perfectly underscore the eerie mood. Arguably, if H. were twenty-five percent more
exploitative and a third less mannered, it really could have gotten somewhere.
