BFI LFF 2018: TWO PLAINS & A FANCY - Dir. Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn
A spiritualist, an artist and a geologist walk into a abandoned mining town. Even if you have heard of that joke before, you’ve probably never heard it told in quite the same manner as Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn tell it in their latest. Funded through Kickstarter, Two Plains & a Fancy is the first self-proclaimed ‘spa western’, which is an accurate description that doesn’t begin to hint at what is to come.
It’s 1893 and the aforementioned trio (Marianna McClellan, Benjamin Crotty, Laetitia Dosch) have travelled to Colorado in search of the region's famous hot springs. What they don't know is that the price of silver has abruptly fallen the once thriving region is facing a severe downturn.
I used joke at the beginning of this review very deliberately; the whole journey of these three characters across the desert plains is a grand cosmic joke. It begins as a satire of modern Western travel: the trio marvel at the seemingly mundane like a group of gap year students searching for profundity in anything and everything that doesn't fit into their narrow worldview. It then morphs into a series of digressions on life, the universe and everything in between by three well-intentioned but largely ill informed participants.
Kalman and Horn's previous film, L for Leisure, listened in on the discussions of post-graduate students at a Florida university in the 1990s, finding humour among a group trapped in the divide between childhood and adulthood (or rather the divide between technical adulthood and the ‘Oh shit, I’m a grown-up now’ actual adulthood that we all eventually experience). Two Plains & a Fancy similarly clashes mannerisms and attitudes from distinct periods in time to humorous effect, but the gulf is stretched to over 100 years. There's a consistency to the tone and topics of the conversations which gives the film, but perhaps not its characters, a focus.
Supposedly period items look suspiciously pristine whilst the odd outfit bears no difference to one available from a modern store (an idea perhaps born out of the necessities of low budget filmmaking). By the time two time travellers stumble from the future and into our intrepid trio's campsite one night, you come to realise that time is more flexible in the film than it initially appeared to be. From the future to the past and an attempt to summon the spirits from the afterlife, presented with a lengthy set-up and gradual pay-off, which may just be the film's comedic peak.
Constant throughout the group’s meandering wanderings is the Colorado landscape; Kalman and Horn shoot on 16mm film once again, overexposing the film stock during the day and underexposing at night to capture the climatic extremities of the rollings plains. Augmented by a score that flirts between wistful and outright intimidating, you’re never quite sure whether you’re meant to savour the landscape’s inherent beauty or be wary of its hostility.
This persistent lack of consistency can, at times, make it difficult to attune to the film’s rhythms and demeanour, and any meaningful worldly insight remains purposefully out of reach. The spiritualist among the film’s trio also claims to be a reformed con-woman so it’s possible all of her actions and words throughout the film may not be genuine at all, depending on which truths are true and which are ...well...not. Nothing may be real in Two Plains & a Fancy, but it’s a bold and hilarious journey nonetheless.
TWO PLAINS & A FANCY screens at the 62nd BFI London Film Festival.
It’s 1893 and the aforementioned trio (Marianna McClellan, Benjamin Crotty, Laetitia Dosch) have travelled to Colorado in search of the region's famous hot springs. What they don't know is that the price of silver has abruptly fallen the once thriving region is facing a severe downturn.
I used joke at the beginning of this review very deliberately; the whole journey of these three characters across the desert plains is a grand cosmic joke. It begins as a satire of modern Western travel: the trio marvel at the seemingly mundane like a group of gap year students searching for profundity in anything and everything that doesn't fit into their narrow worldview. It then morphs into a series of digressions on life, the universe and everything in between by three well-intentioned but largely ill informed participants.
Kalman and Horn's previous film, L for Leisure, listened in on the discussions of post-graduate students at a Florida university in the 1990s, finding humour among a group trapped in the divide between childhood and adulthood (or rather the divide between technical adulthood and the ‘Oh shit, I’m a grown-up now’ actual adulthood that we all eventually experience). Two Plains & a Fancy similarly clashes mannerisms and attitudes from distinct periods in time to humorous effect, but the gulf is stretched to over 100 years. There's a consistency to the tone and topics of the conversations which gives the film, but perhaps not its characters, a focus.
Supposedly period items look suspiciously pristine whilst the odd outfit bears no difference to one available from a modern store (an idea perhaps born out of the necessities of low budget filmmaking). By the time two time travellers stumble from the future and into our intrepid trio's campsite one night, you come to realise that time is more flexible in the film than it initially appeared to be. From the future to the past and an attempt to summon the spirits from the afterlife, presented with a lengthy set-up and gradual pay-off, which may just be the film's comedic peak.
Constant throughout the group’s meandering wanderings is the Colorado landscape; Kalman and Horn shoot on 16mm film once again, overexposing the film stock during the day and underexposing at night to capture the climatic extremities of the rollings plains. Augmented by a score that flirts between wistful and outright intimidating, you’re never quite sure whether you’re meant to savour the landscape’s inherent beauty or be wary of its hostility.
This persistent lack of consistency can, at times, make it difficult to attune to the film’s rhythms and demeanour, and any meaningful worldly insight remains purposefully out of reach. The spiritualist among the film’s trio also claims to be a reformed con-woman so it’s possible all of her actions and words throughout the film may not be genuine at all, depending on which truths are true and which are ...well...not. Nothing may be real in Two Plains & a Fancy, but it’s a bold and hilarious journey nonetheless.
TWO PLAINS & A FANCY screens at the 62nd BFI London Film Festival.
Click HERE for screening and ticket details.
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