Ivan Kander
Playing like a series of non sequitur comic panels read in quick succession, Slow Vine from director Glenn Fellman, writer Ben Gauthier and producer Jack Forbes is absurd, surreal, and funny. It also belies standard “short film” classification. Is it a series of comedy sketches? Sort of…but….also…not really?
Ultimately, the thing that connects the various vignettes is their randomness and tonal execution: precise, slow-burn jokes played with a seriousness and weight that the characters never challenge. It’s funny because the players within never admit they are in on the joke.
As Gauthier relates to Short of the Week:
“It started out as just a vague tonal thing. We’d notice particular specifics—a middle-aged man dressed in business casual running on an elliptical, the plaque an auto shop gets for sponsoring a Little League team, the Van Nuys German Deli—and began to label them as distinctly ‘Slow Vine.’ We were also inspired by a certain brand of deadpan Scandinavian comedy. Roy Andersson was certainly a big touchstone, but it was Nikki Lindroth von Bahr‘s shorts that were the lightning bolt kickoff inspiration. The form emerged out of single panel comics we grew up loving, like The Far Side.”
Indie comedies aren’t often known for their technical acumen, but Slow Vine bucks the trend and really pulls out all the stops here: every shot is perfectly framed, lit, and staged. It’s one of the most meticulous and well-filmed shorts I’ve seen in recent memory, and this formal commitment to the technical craft serves almost as a joke in and of itself, giving the absurd material within a sense of reverence and profundity that it ostensibly shouldn’t deserve: visual gags such as “walking like you’re in a museum while at the deli” or “the melancholy felt when a person fainting at a barbeque steals the attention away from your unconventional jewelry choices.”
This is a comedy for people who think too much about how the world perceives them: insular, self-aware, and neurotic (e.g. writers). There is a brilliance to the set-ups and punchlines in that the concepts are strange, but they’re still tugging at something relatable underneath all that weirdness. If I Think You Should Leave-style absurdity was given a Valium, you might get the type of sketch seen in Slow Vine.
I can’t stop walking like I’m in a museum – just one of the the many sketches on show in Slow Vine
Part of the joy is trying to determine the gimmick or “pitch” of each sketch before the end title-card reveals it: a riddle that doesn’t necessarily need to be solved, but there is a sense of satisfaction in “figuring out” what about this situation feels “off” before the film clues you in.
The Slow Vine team started by writing 60+ vignettes to precisely dial in the tone, and, then, from that large grouping, they picked their favorites to capture the final compendium that you see there. The sketches were shot over two weekends with a variety of talented comedic actors, the crew racing to and from various strip malls in the San Fernando Valley to get so many varied set-ups. As any indie filmmaker intrinsically knows, shooting in this many locations so quickly and with such precision is no easy feat…the commitment to the craft is really admirable and almost as impressive as the creativity of the punchlines.
I eagerly await more Slow Vine in the future…