D+ | An aspiring filmmaker makes her first film about the career of an unnamed mid-century actress. Directed by Cheryl Dunye Starring Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner, and Valarie Walker Review by Jon Kissel |
I volunteer as a screener for the Atlanta Film Festival, and while I’m happy to do it, it does mean watching a lot of bad movies. Bad has a wide spectrum, ranging from incompetently made to unoriginal or indulgent. That last one is the most irritating, as it speaks to a fundamental mismatch between the filmmaker’s perception of themselves and the fact that they’re paying an organization to let them show their movie to other people. Some part of me admires the chutzpah on an indulgent festival applicant, even if their film is not up to snuff. This leads us to The Watermelon Woman, a film that instantly evoked the mental effort required to watch a bad screener and try to come up with something positive to say about it. Cheryl Dunye’s debut indie is politically ahead of its time, as representation has been all the rage in film circles for at least the last decade, but that’s not worth much when it’s simultaneously struggling to piece a coherent scene together.
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