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(1992,
B/W, 75 minutes)
This landmark film from the independent Scopdom Scop production company mines the vein of mythic realism they first began to explore in their 1989 feature I Enjoy Sailing. In fact, the new film is something of a "prequel" to its predecessor, filling in the pasts of its three main characters, Lamia, Joy, and Dane. In Too Cold to Cry, director/writer Marshall Jay Vargo and cinematographer Met Fields have extended their range to the extremes of both naturalism and expressionism at the same time. The entire picture is filmed on location in Chicago in cinema verité style, in black and white with a hand-held camera. But this realistic framework incorporates archetypal figures and a mythic reach in themes. Lamia and Joy and their roommate Micky are thus at one level, that of a grotesque tragicomedy with feminist undertones, kidnappers and torturers of men, while at another level they function as a tripartite Celtic fertility goddess participating in a symbolic cycle of spiritual death and rebirth. The film's soundtrack, by Sid Hartha, is acutely sensitive to these multiple levels, and cues the viewer to shifts not only of pace or tone, but of significance. The upbeat performances by newcomers Karen Georgiafandis (as Lamia) and Debbie Schimmel (Micky) bring out the humor of the dark script, and Joanne Morrison, whom viewers will recognize from other Scopdom Scop productions, steals scene after scene as the ditsy Joy.
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