Ben Wilson’s In Current Season has been giving me mental fits since watching it, mainly in that I’ve been trying to grasp precisely what it all means. On a strictly basic level, it’s a series of short moments in the lives of a few young adults: Sam (Forrest French) and Britney (Torey Byrne) are a couple, but they’re having issues because Britney is fixated on taking the next step in their relationship and Sam is focused on improving his future through college. Britney’s younger sister, Marion (Morgan Edwards), has found herself the object of affection of Sam’s friend Mike (Ben Wilson), though a proposed date at a high school dance seems destined for failure based on the meticulous approach Mike takes to crafting the perfect experience; namely, if he could choreograph every aspect of it, even down to Marion’s haircut, he’d do it.
These little moments in the main characters’ lives play out in beautifully minimalistic black-and-white with an omniscient voiceover and chapter markers to guide the proceedings. The acting from all is competent, meaning no one specifically stands out as exceptional but, likewise, no one stands out as awful either. In other words, I’m at a loss to find anything that I really disliked about the short, or wish to criticize too heavily though, at 30 minutes long, it is stuck in “short film no man’s land.” Still, something seems to be missing for me.
As I stated in the beginning, I’ve been having trouble figuring out exactly what this film is, or what it is trying to say. Is it just an artistic expansion upon the minutia of growing up? Is it trying to say something about manipulation in relationships? Is it a statement on how the most trivial of experiences can appear to be the biggest of moments when stuck in the middle of it? Just as the characters drift in and out of confusion, is there nothing for me to figure out? Is there no answer? Am I just projecting?
This is the type of film that benefits more from the creation of the conversation than some outright dictation of meaning, ultimately. Again, completely solid and competent affair from top to bottom, but nothing terribly exceptional. Unfortunately, it’s just in that forgettable middle (and, again, if it’s looking for a film festival life, its length will be problematic for programming).
Kudos should be given to Ben Wilson and crew for making something that is entertaining and solid in its duration; that is not all that easy a thing to do, as exemplified by all the films that I can’t even elevate to “competent” status. I just wish I had connected with the film more than I did. I still think there’s something more to the film than I’m getting out of it, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
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