NOW ON PRIME VIDEO! I’ve been to Venice, Italy, with my wife, spending a day doing the touristy things like a gondola ride in the canal while appreciating the immense beauty of the city. Luckily, our experience was not like indie writer/director Austin Balke’s feature film Nate and Moriah in Venice, about a young struggling couple who bicker while walking around Venice for a day. It’s the anti-Before Sunrise, where Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as Jesse and Celine are two young strangers who meet on a train and then spend one romantic night in Vienna, walking and talking about love, life, and philosophy (all while falling in love with each other).
Nick (Michael Ridley) and Moriah (Corrinne Mica) have a complicated relationship that we can see big cracks in from the start of their conversations, and the reasons why come to light by the end of the film. Nick is a filmmaker who comes from a financially stable middle-class family, and Moriah is an Instagram influencer who grew up poor. Moriah dismisses Nick’s career so far because “he has only made a short film,” and Nick hates that Moriah cares so much about her social media posts, which he thinks are meaningless.
These two people spend the movie walking and talking about life without much of a plot for most of it (which is meta because Nick mentions loving a movie with no plot), much like the aforementioned Richard Linklater romantic classic, except every conversation seems to bring them further away rather than closer. I think it’s an interesting premise, and hopefully the audience does not go in expecting a typical rom-com (and they shouldn’t if they read the description beforehand, which says “the past gets the best of them.”), unless they find the fighting to be relatable and comical.
“…couple who bicker while walking around Venice…”
The background of Venice is a character in and of itself, with a rich history that Nick and Moriah discuss. The only problem is that the city is mainly in the background, albeit it still grabs my attention, but I would have loved to see more shots showing its full gorgeousness (but I understand that it can be difficult on a low budget), such as a scene where Nick marvels at St. Mark’s Basilica because he’s obsessed with the Mark Wahlberg version of The Italian Job.
Ridley and Mica do a bang-up job of making their relationship feel authentic and lived in. I also really enjoyed Balke’s dialogue because it felt relatable, and nerdy from the film nuggets he wrote in, such as the characters talking about the Eyes Wide Shut conspiracy theory about Stanley Kubrick getting too close for the secret society’s comfort before dying unexpectedly, and then having his film completely re-cut by the studio. Personally, the scenes with the masks from the Kubrick film (which Moriah finds disturbing because Nick informed her that it was from an orgy in the movie) bring back warm memories for me, because my wife and I happened to be in Venice during the middle of their strangely alluring Euro Comic Con-like festival aptly titled the Carnival of Venice, where many people wore those types of weird masks and outfits.
The Before Sunrise trilogy is one of my favorites of all-time, so an indie film that explores the opposite side of that is fascinating for me, while the performances and artistry held my interest beyond that. By the end of Nate and Moriah in Venice, you have to ponder whether they should even be together, but hopefully, the audience enjoys the off-the-beaten-path ride along the way.
"…Venice is a character in and of itself..."
