RATING
Director(s): Theda Hammel
Country: United States
Author: Theda Hammel, Faheem Ali
Actor(s): John Early, Qaher Harhash, Elizabeth Dement
Written by Tom Augustine.
No one wants to think about the pandemic. The COVID-19 era of 2020 and beyond, while not technically over, is pronounced enough (and close enough) that to look at it too directly can feel a little tacky, a little discomfiting. Unlike other major, world-historical events – wars, terrorist attacks, financial crashes – no one seems especially interested in mythologising or conducting a postmortem on what was going on in society as we closed ourselves off from the world. In cinema, it’s a challenge — because everyone was largely indoors, and otherwise usually masked, there’s not much immediately ‘cinematic’ to draw upon when telling stories about this era. A few works have emerged that directly discuss this period with a measure of artistic merit — to rattle off a quick list: John Hyams’ Sick, Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi, Abel Ferrara’s Zeros and Ones, Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion, Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Claire Denis’ Stars at Noon, and the big daddies of the subgenre, Eddington and, most controversially, Bo Burnham’s Inside. All of these films possess a shared discomfort — most are sweaty, humid pictures about how our neuroses were amplified by the very specific, claustrophobic conditions that the pandemic brought about. While not the very best of this list, Theda Hammel’s Stress Positions ultimately feels like the truest encapsulation of what one’s everyday headspace was during this period — an ongoing agitation that left deeper scars than any of us are glad to admit (perhaps why we’re so averse to revisiting the period so soon). That is to say, an encapsulation of the experience of Westerners, people of some level of comforts not afforded to much of the world beyond ours, who tend to foreground their own misfortune in the narrative of the world. Fascinatingly, Hammel’s film is not about the pandemic so much as it is about this other element — and how the presence of an aloof Moroccan interloper fundamentally shifts the perspectives of the white denizens of a small community of queer Brooklynites.
This month, Theda Hammel’s debut feature, one of the strongest independent features to come out of New York City in some time, debuts on the Rialto Channel. An anxiety-ridden pandemic-era dramedy, it is a bold introduction for Hammel — a fearlessly queer and outspoken assessment of Western cluelessness in staggering times.
Wry and acidic, Stress Positions is funny in a New Yorker cartoon kind of way, rather than in a laugh-out-loud kind of way, which places it comfortably in the company of New York’s vivid history of independent dramedies, many headlined by emerging comedians — Woody Allen being the obvious anchorpoint, but more recent examples including Shiva Baby (starring Rachel Sennott) or Obvious Child (starring Jenny Slate). Stress Positions’ comedian-star is John Early, perhaps best known for his role in the underrated Search Party, whose primary comedic mode balances a willowy, effete elegance with boorish goofiness. Here, Early is one of a large ensemble, playing the exceptionally monikered Terry Goon, an especially hapless, neurotic Millennial who is living in one of the homes of his cheating soon-to-be ex, while also caring for his Gen-Z nephew Bahlul (Palestinian actor Qaher Harhash), a Moroccan model who has broken his leg and requires constant care. Terry’s friends, couple Karla and Vanessa (Hammel herself and Amy Zimmer), are among many in the Brooklynite’s orbit who find themselves inexorably drawn to the beautiful, seemingly naive Bahlul, finding reasons to flood Goon’s household even as he melts down over social distancing and masking. Vanessa and Karla’s relationship is in a rocky state, too, with the outspoken Karla both resenting Vanessa’s success with a book loosely drawn from her life as a trans woman, and also living off the profits said book accumulated.
There are many other side characters in the mix, too, all of them kooky, largely queer figures from the neighbourhood — a near-mute upstairs neighbour, a bemused delivery driver, Terry’s loose and unpleasant ex-husband Leo (John Roberts), and so on. It allows for Hammel to capture a lively queer community of the sort frequently associated with Brooklyn, but also to suggest that such communities lie in a state of ruin in the 2020s. Each of the members of the ensemble (save Bahlul, who is othered in every sense, including his being far younger than the Millennials who populate the rest of the cast) are a caustic mess of hang-ups, anxieties and frustrations, too myopic to try and genuinely forge connections with anyone else around them. Bahlul, meanwhile, watches on as these thirtysomethings go about undoing themselves with an air of confusion, his generation’s more easygoing and openhearted tendencies inspiring both desire and jealousy in his older minders. Hammel’s script sparkles with Lena Dunham-esque observations and cutting one-liners, which are paired with the filmmaker’s natural aptitude for harnessing chaos — her constantly moving camera and staccato editing rhythms conjure an ongoing sense of dysfunction, as though we’re witnessing a house of cards tumbling down in slow motion. If a debut film’s mission is to suggest a new talent by stamping out their visual sensibility, Stress Positions does so with aplomb.
The film is digressive, sometimes overly so, mashing so many warring thoughts and ideas into its slight 90-minute frame that not all come away cleanly. The film is narrated by a range of key figures, who not only give us plot insights but backstory and glimpses of their internal monologues. A compelling thread is Bahlul’s tormented relationship with his absent mother, a Westerner who converted to Islam and returned to America hateful toward her home-nation. The way immigrants and people from marginalised cultures are subsumed, ignored and browbeaten by white Westerners is an ongoing concern of Stress Positions — from the long-suffering GrubHub delivery driver Ronald (Faheem Ali) to Bahlul himself, who must constantly remind the Americans around him that Morocco is not part of the Middle East. The way these concerns overlap with generational and queer concerns adds to the slippery, sweaty sheen of Stress Positions, whose title refers to physically demanding postures of submission often used in torture. If your mind immediately went to the tortures carried out at Abu Ghraib, you’re in the right frame of mind for Hammel’s complex, rewarding film. It’s a busy, frequently heavy-handed work, but one expansive enough in form and narrative to impress, and to herald Hammel’s arrival. As with other major films from American transgender directors in the 2020s, such as those by Jane Schoenbrun and Vera Drew, there is a certain feeling that is generated in Stress Positions that feels truly of that nation, despite (or because of) the vitriol and oppression this tiny community faces in their day to day lives.
Stress Positions – premieres on January 24 at 8:30 PM on Rialto Channel (Sky, Channel 39)