With “Lovely”, Trevor Hollen shows a sort of fascination with the dank, shady, seedy spots in people’s lives. I see him as the type of guy who’s seen movies that involve seedy situations, and wanted to try some of them out himself. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that and Hollen really has a grip on Dovie (Dovie Pettitt), a junkie who wants one last score and even resorts to stealing her kids’ toys to try to get money for drugs.
The first obvious question would be, “Why in the hell does this woman need her kids’ toys to get what she needs?” As it turns out, the guy she deals with, Chad (Chad Boyles), collects G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Star Wars toys among many others. She’s just a real bastard in stealing her kids’ toys. That’s pretty low and luckily, Dovie Pettitt manages to make this character as desperate as possible. The beginning, however, has problems with slight jump cuts, which may be there to symbolize the fast-moving Dovie, collecting toys around the apartment, but it just gets annoying.
One scene inside Chad’s apartment, involves Dovie in a catfight with Mel (Melody Davis) which is not the kind of catfight you come to expect when two women are duking it out, but it’s easy to tell that these two are not the best of friends because apparently, Dovie was not supposed to be at Chad’s apartment anymore.
“Lovely” realizes its characters as well as they can be realized and as well as the audience would probably want to get to know them. Despite the unnecessary music at times (which has a mournful tone that’s perfect for desperation, but is overused), director Hollen manages a good sense of uneasiness. I don’t mind watching these characters, but it’s also nice to get the hell out of there as fast as possible and Hollen has done right by certainly not making them overstay their welcome.
