Clementine
Documentaries often predominate at Local Sightings, but this year’s Clementine, directed by Lara Jean Gallagher of Portland, might well be a narrative breakout. Tenser and riskier than your average mumblecore movie, it’s about a queer woman in her late 20s who breaks into her cheating older girlfriend’s lake house and strikes up an ambiguous relationship with a pretty teenage troublemaker. Clementine casts the Pacific Northwest wilderness as a place where fear and desire can overpower ordinary realities, endangering your hold on your sense of right and wrong. Though understated, Gallagher’s debut feature brews an atmosphere of moral and sexual peril that may make you question where you want the story to go.
by Joule Zelman