'Safelight' Keeps Characters, Mood In Focus For This Summer Movie Season Antidote

By Joel Wicklund in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 16, 2015 8:09PM

Evan Peters and Juno Temple in "Safelight" (Photo courtesy of ARC Entertainment).

Quiet, modest and the antithesis of this amped-up summer movie season, Safelight seems like a cinematic refugee from another era—namely the '70s and early '80s. It's got more than a little of The Last Picture Show and Tender Mercies in its blood, along with lesser-known movies like Fat City, The Hired Hand, Heartland and Payday.

It's not that filmmakers don't make low-key, character-driven mood pieces anymore. Jeff Nichols' Mud (my favorite film of 2013) comes immediately to mind as a recent, superior example. But Mud is more in the tradition of classical storytelling techniques, including a subtle but steady build in suspense. The school of laid-back, observational cinema that Safelight belongs to has its own distinct flavor and hasn't been in much evidence lately, even in the niche corners of low-budget American independent movies.

It's not the best of its type and it certainly travels a well-worn narrative road with more than a few clichés in its telling. But with vivid, dusty, small town atmosphere and some excellent performances, Tony Aloupis' directorial debut feels like a bit of a gift...a chance to take a breather from the often-frenetic style and rote plotting of much of the mainstream movie scene.

Evan Peters (American Horror Story, X-Men: Days of Future Past) plays Charles, a high school senior with a bad limp who works part time at a truck stop while also caring for his ailing father (Jason Beghe). He's picked on by school bullies and only finds refuge in the company of his friendly employer (Christine Lahti) and his photography class at school.

Enter Vickie, a teenage runaway-turned-prostitute played by Juno Temple. Waiting for her johns at the truck stop, she strikes up some shy conversations with Charles. When she learns about a photography contest he plans to enter, she offers to drive him up the California coast so he can shoot the lighthouses he plans to use as his subject.

Their fondness for each other grows as they get to know each other, though the shadow of Vickie's sadistic pimp, Skid (Kevin Alejandro), and a traumatic reunion with her mother and sisters loom over their blossoming romance. Those subplots raise the story's temperature for fleeting moments, but mainly this is a serene exercise in character sketching. Aloupis gives his actors plenty of fairly uneventful moments to simply let their characters be, and the cast makes the most of that freedom.

Peters and Temple carry the longest of those moments and both deliver sweet, empathetic performances. Temple in particular continues to impress with her acting chops and, even more importantly, a willingness to take risks on projects like William Friedkin's savage dark comedy Killer Joe, the intense and unsettling lesbian romance Jack & Diane, and now this refreshingly out-of-fashion dramatic offering.

The supporting cast also deserves a mention. Lahti—an Emmy winner and Oscar nominee who seems to have fallen off the industry's radar—has always had the talent to rank right up with the best actresses of her generation, but she's rarely been granted the prime roles to match it. She is stuck in the somewhat thankless role of the always-cheerful maternal stand-in, but she makes the thin part an appealing one. Beghe, probably best known for his role on NBC's Chicago P.D. (though horror fans will remember him well from George Romero's Monkey Shines) brings a moving, tragic air to all his scenes. And Alejandro manages to make the tired psychotic pimp role fresh with his eccentric turns and explosiveness.

Aloupis doesn't claim any stylistic calling card here, and the movie is all the better for it. He showcases his desert truck stop scenes with the same naturalism as the more scenic lighthouse settings and focuses squarely on the interactions of his characters. His writing may not be profound, and the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold opening up to the lonely kid is a pretty rusty old conceit. But it works here. Safelight isn't in the essential ranks of deliberately paced, spare character studies, but it's nice to see that tradition being carried on.

Safelight. Written and directed by Tony Aloupis. Starring Evan Peters, Juno Temple, Kevin Alejandro, Christine Lahti and Jason Beghe. 83 mins. Rated R.
Opens Friday, July 17 at AMC's South Barrington 30 and also available through iTunes and various video-on-demand services.