Shot in a forgiving high-contrast black-and-white, Michael Glover Smith’s day-in-the-Chicago-life romance has the flick-of-the-wrist directness of city locations—streets and storefronts, recognizable sorts of apartments and back porches, the El and bookstores, Formica-table cafes—but also hopeful investment in conversational cul-de-sacs, the kind of “tension-filled banter” of classical local improv. Nineteenth-century literature does battle with distracted females; a bookstore clerk who brags on not having a computer plots contemporary writing. I’ve seen worse arguments and overheard even worse, and I’d hardly like to be stuck in a room or around a dinner table with any of the quartet of protagonists, but they’d probably say the same about bickering I’ve been a part of. There’s truth in the underbrush. Plus, profanity is genially fucking rife. With Kevin Wehby, Nina Ganet, Chelsea David, Adam Overberg. 71m. (Ray Pride)
“Cool Apocalypse” plays November 21-22 at Siskel. .
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published soon. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram as Ghost Signs Chicago. More photography on Instagram.
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