The Owl example shows that film-making is not only time-consuming but also complex. This pet project took six years to create and was funded by donations towards the end of its production. Julian Pham, the movie’s writer, director and cinematographer who also dances wrote on his crowdfunding page for the debut feature on Indiegogo: “We weathered a pandemic. We kept running out of money.
We’ve been trying to pay for it on our own all along the way, but have run out of options.” His short films have screened at festivals such as the New Renaissance Film Festival, Kinofilm Manchester International Short Film Festival and Blow-Up International Arthouse Film Festival.
It follows Jean (Marica Petrey), who comes back to Oakland after several years in Seattle when her father (Randall Nakano) falls gravely ill. Being back home forces her to confront painful memories she had hoped would stay dormant. At first, she thinks she will be there for a short time because her father is known for being dramatic about his health. But soon he gives up responsibility for his locksmith business and Nico (Robert M. Lee) enters her life.
The main theme of the movie seems to be self-discovery through this character. Throughout the film we see Jean coming into herself more and changing her perspective on things little by little as it goes on. Most notably though are scenes where Jean watches old tapes that her mom recorded which hints at how much memory plays a part in dealing with trauma.
The writing could support this potentially engaging process better; however ,the pace is inconsistent throughout while dialogue tends to lack any real punch or believability that would make them seem like words spoken between humans living through such events together rather than lines read off paper somewhere else entirely which may be because three different people wrote the script.
Marica Petrey does well as the lead; she shows happiness, confusion and anger convincingly. Jean Kaneko feels like a real person who has a lot of issues with her dad but doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be doing with life. Unfortunately for the film though, Petrey is the only actor here that does feel like they’re giving it their all both Nakano and Lee deliver flat performances at best which leaves much emotional weight on Marica’s shoulders.
Andres Gallegos’ cinematography also stands out among other things about this movie because most times it is subtle yet consistent throughout so you don’t really notice anything being out of place visually-speaking. Some really nice-looking scenes were shot by the Chilean operator too so props there. The style of filming definitely fits with what’s going on in terms of topic/overall atmosphere which makes for some captivating parts when no one talks and we’re just left looking at stuff instead which are frequent in OWL.
To sum up,”Owl” is not a bad first effort by any means as it comes across sincere and touches on interesting ideas such as father-daughter dynamics or finding one’s own purpose in life. However, these topics are not explored enough within this work making them seem under-developed thus resulting in mediocre experience overall.
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