Cherry

To her credit, there are some lovely moments where she plays around with a Lisa Frank-like sparkly unicorn aesthetic. The roller skating is particularly tasty, perhaps the only edible part of the movie. The director would do well with a project in the style of Roller Boogie, but first, she needs to figure out how to write her characters with depth, at least a puddle’s worth. I can understand how a screenwriter of shorts can be obliterated by the feature-length format, but Galibert had the help on the script by Arthur Cohen and Anne-Claire Jaulin, though help is too strong of a word here. A dead giveaway that we are in amateurville is the 24-hour story structure. This allows the story to progress due to a ticking-down clock, not through the characters’ actions, reactions, or other plot mechanics. Even with this lazy setup, the amount of meandering that occurs is astronomical. Just because Cherry is aimless doesn’t mean the film should be as well. You can see the stretch marks from where this was inflated from a short to a feature, with used air passing for substance.

“…plays around with a Lisa Frank-like sparkly unicorn aesthetic.”

Galibert doesn’t tackle the subject of abortion so much as brushes past it while begging pardon. Just the appearance of an abortion in a picture can violently upset folks who have dealt with it. This film wraps itself up in the subject, dipping the whole picture in poison. What could have been a soul-wrenching inner tug of war is reduced to sitcom twaddle. Remember that episode of The Brady Bunch where Jan is considering an abortion, but every time she has a chance to tell her family, she doesn’t? You don’t because that was never an actual episode, but I bet you can imagine it. I also bet what you imagined was more fleshed out than what you will get here. I’m not suggesting Cherry should have a laugh track, because it is not funny at all, despite several attempts at humor. The Alzheimer’s jokes are particularly disgusting, about as amusing as kicking a crutch to see someone fall.

I have rarely seen such a need for a filmmaker to go to Lifetime Movie school than this. I know many don’t appreciate the craft of Made-for-TV films, but they have set levels of quality that can be studied. Here Galibert could learn about pacing, conflict, plot and subplot, and the need for clearly high stakes. It can also help her pick better titles. Cherry seems like it should be some kind of ironic moniker as it immediately conjures up old Times Square porn palace marquees. But like everything else in the movie, it is just there to stand around and look cute until time is up.

Cherry screened at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.