Guest
Minimal in budget as well as in style, form, and content – the entire production is said to have cost a mere $10,000 – this black-and-white 16 millimeter tragicomedy was shot by two UCLA film students chiefly on and around their own campus. Both filmmakers play themselves in the movie, as do all the other characters; the slender plot is a literal restaging of events that actually happened, with everyone re-creating his or her original role. A single subject – Zahedi’s unrequited love for, or infatuation with, Erin McKim over the space of what appears to be two or three months – is the focus of practically every scene and shot. The film’s minimalism is not merely the result of its limited number of settings, camera angles, characters, and dramatic situations but also of the limited number of emotions and behavioral patterns available to the characters. The strengths of this concentrated approach are both comic and analytical; the results never stray from the recognizable and lifelike. The film’s multiple repetitions lampoon the monotony of romantic obsession and the monotony of a life-style that simultaneously supports and thwarts such an obsession.
