THE IN-BETWEEN plays in the ‘Take Care’ Section of the Paris International Film Festival 2021, taking place online between 4th and 14th February 2021.
Passes and Tickets available at: https://www.parisintlfest.com/
It has often been said that the dawn of modern Independent Cinema began with a road movie – Dennis Hopper’s EASY RIDER (1969), a film that was made for under $500,000 back in the day and grossed umpteen times that amount, critically acclaimed and tapping into the counter-culture that personified the late 1960s. Significantly, the film also opened up the potential for more modestly budget story-telling, whilst allowing free-thinking artists and film-makers around Tinseltown to create an alternate perspective
Since then, the open roads of the continental USA have formed the backdrop to many stories of destiny and discovery – and it is the open road that provides a context for two young female friends in the new drama THE IN-BETWEEN.
Mindy Bledsoe and Jennifer Stone co-write (with Rob Senska), co-produce and lead as Junior Bramley and Mads Olsen, based in LA but leading contrasting and challenging lives, Bramley suffering from physical pain and Olsen a confirmed diabetic who decide to set out on a road trip to South Dakota to renew Olsen’s driving licence, whilst Bramley has to head to Portland, Oregon in honour of her dead sister, placing shot glasses in tribute to her at various locations.
It’s not an easy state of affairs, with the emotional and physical barriers proving to be both reasonable and unreasonable as the pair try to discover their own sense of self-worth in the context of each other’s personal pain, but a revelation is about to cut a little more….
Some may parallel this film with Ridley Scott’s THELMA & LOUISE (1991), the story of two women who discover strength and validity from their own respective traumas (Louise dealing with her past, Thelma dealing with her present home life), but the central element is about a more subtle and gradual challenge of the two lead characters, played by two actresses who suffer from the conditions of their on-screen characters.
THE IN-BETWEEN is an extraordinary achievement, both on-screen and off, given that the script was written in two weeks and then shot – incredibly given that 4500 miles was covered to tell the story – in fourteen days. Bledsoe and Stone provide two balanced and courageous performances working from their own script which tries to define some of the contrast and consequence of having emotional and physically-troubling conditions without resorting to extravagant make-up effects to reveal what the condition is.
Imaginative visuals and a refreshing location in Portland help elevate THE IN-BETWEEN to a stimulating cinematic experience that retains the very core of what made EASY RIDER such a ground-breaker. It is, at the very heart, a movie that can help provide clarity and closure to anyone who is troubled by their own emotional perspective and whether their own perspective is unique.
