Jess + Moss | Review

Coming across as that kind of poem with no clear structure, that does not rhyme, does not contain any narrative, linear or non-linear, but carries great meaning, and in this case, a sense of place – if you’ve seen that Levi’s commercial with the young girl narrating Walt Whitman about how we’re all pioneers, carried over a montage of black and white contemporary America, you might be able to grasp writer/director Clay Jeter’s Jess + Moss. This film is much more interested in rhythm and melody than structure, as well as relationships and depicting a universe over plot points. Everything works for sections at a time, but it might have been better suited for short film format as the film at its duration drags more than it moves smoothly — actually you could also take 20 minutes off at any point without missing much.

Sarah Hagan (Freaks & Geeks, Orange County) plays Jess, and if you don’t recognize her you’d insist she is actually an amateur teenage actress discovered by Harmony Korine on some farm in the south. Austin Vickers is not quite that, but closer, acting in his first feature film. They have great chemistry together. Jeter fashions an almost scary dynamic between them that goes back and forth between sibling-like and romantic. Clearly, the camera employs a Laura Mulvey-esque “gaze” on Jess. Sometimes that is the viewer’s eye, but sometimes it is Moss’.

A great way to think about Jess + Moss is to compare it to Two Gates of Sleep, a similarly hard to define feature from last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Both depict the contemporary southern United States in ways that could easily pass for 50 years ago. They’re both about an America that existed before, and still exists, but you have to look for it. When it was The Grapes of Wrath, these movies were charged with the need for social change. Now, they are about the decay of a way of life, and how the youth who get born into that rut deal with it.

It isn’t hard to make these locations look beautiful, and they do not disappoint. Every shot is a lush vista. Jess + Moss parade around rusted water towers and junkyards like they are their back yards. Technically, there are no qualms with the film, people will just tire with the pacing and the lack of forward momentum. Jeter announces himself as a sure hand behind the camera with his debut feature and there are many bigger films that could really use his eye and his ideas to figure out how to express more. Jeter is certainly expressive, as is this film, it’s just done in a strange way that doesn’t exactly take full advantage of the feature narrative format and medium –- this may have to do with the army of credited screenwriters. Pull any 20-minute segment out of this and it is A+, but there are not enough ideas at play and too much repetition to justify 90 minutes.

Reviewed at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. New Frontier Section.

81 Mins. January, 21st, 2011

Rating 2.5 stars