A Love Affair of Sorts Dir. David Guy Levy

[Paladin; 2011]

Styles: pseudo-documentary
Others: Catfish, Full Frontal, Uncle Kent

We are in a distinctively egalitarian era, when nearly anyone can make a film and find an audience. Homegrown and indie films can be financed without investors, shot over a weekend, and posted on the internet or submitted to any of the countless festivals that have sprouted up in the past decade. With digital cameras taking over as the preferred medium, many neophytes may never touch a strip of celluloid, while a viral video can turn a couple of kids in the hinterlands into the next sensation. This democratization definitely has its benefits, perhaps the most obvious being creative freedom and the vast and interconnected world of Etopia. (Sharing this article will increase its exposure exponentially.) The downside is that we’re constantly being exposed to visual pablum, and it’s becoming increasingly harder to comb through the chaff.

David Guy Levy’s A Love Affair of Sorts is both a product and perpetrator of this new cinema. Overtly lo-fi without any guiding rationale, it is reportedly the first feature-length film to be shot on the pocket-size Flip Camera (or, to be more specific, multiple Flip Cameras). And now that the Filp Camera is defunct, it may become the only film to own that distinction in perpetuity. I’m tempted to say that it’s a gimmick or a belated effort to push more units, but the camera itself does play an integral role. It’s practically another character — an omnipresent voyeur, insider, and storyteller.

Ostensibly playing a fictionalized version of himself, David Guy Levy is David, a painter working on a vaguely defined video art project in which he carries the camera everywhere he goes. The action begins at a bookstore when he bumps into Enci (Lili Bordán), a Hungarian immigrant who appears to be shoplifting. She’s a little terrified at first, but David asks her out to lunch anyway. This chance encounter almost instantly develops into an unlikely partnership, as Enci shows up at his house the next day with her own camera and the two become collaborators. Schlubby David is fairly obvious about his intentions to take their relationship to the next level, but Enci isn’t attracted to him and already has a chiseled boyfriend named Boris (Iván Kamarás). David, however, is insistent and goes as far as tagging along on one of Enci’s dates. It’s a discomfiting, sleazy way to entice a woman, but somehow it’s successful. Because within a week of meeting, David professes his love to Enci and she agrees to move in with him.

(There is a second, mostly irritating meta-plot, which is hinted at in the opening scene but not revealed until the final act. Divulging it would spoil the grand mystique, but I will say that it is both unnecessary and trite. Conceptually, adding multiple layers to the narrative is best left to seasoned writers and filmmakers. In this case, the rule-breaking is arbitrary and disjointed, a half-thought device that only serves to confuse the audience. It’s an attempt to reverse the narrative, but it lacks the focus needed to draw out the subliminal meaning.)

Although it aspires to be novel and realistic, A Love Affair of Sorts fails to transcend stereotypes or gain credibility. Like so many YouTube videos, it has all the undesirable qualities of a middlebrow vanity project. Bordán and Kamarás are convincing in their roles, but Guy Levy made the narcissistic choice to cast himself as the lead, and his character suffers immensely as a result. A fledgling actor without any credits, he rambles through long takes that rely on improvisation and often appears insincere. And in the one or two scenes where the characters are supposedly connecting, there’s a schmaltzy soundtrack that makes David and Enci’s relationship even more unbelievable. It’s a cheap stunt, one that undermines the intended expression of realism. Even if their faux-romance is to be believed, there are still the confessional bits that make it occasionally feel like a nauseating parody of The Real World.

Whether scripted or not, A Love Affair of Sorts is often meandering and painfully raw. It wants to be coded and contemporary, but it comes across flat and uninspired. At one point, David tells Enci that his project doesn’t have a thesis; it’s as if he knows he’s creating mediocre art, so he’s going to sell it as abstract. And underneath that conceit is the director’s commentary about his own work.

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