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Olivia (2012)

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Ranked #15,819
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When Olivia begins to realize that her boyfriend has no intention of returning, she starts exploring her own insecurities. --IMDb
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Review by Ginose
Added: March 9, 2012
Before this piece I have had no previous experience with Edgar Muniz's directorial works, though I briefly viewed him in the ridiculously obtuse, avant-garde trip of a film "Doorways and Meander" and I can say that, from that, I was unready to see what he, himself, was willing to drive into a movie. I certainly didn't expect a piece like "Olivia" but, frankly, I don't think I've ever excepted a film to be like "Olivia", for better or worse.

Olivia is stuck in a strange place as a young woman coming into what is, very much, the rest of her life. She is stuck with the constant reminders of the mundane in her job, life, and, above all, her views of herself. Just recently her boyfriend took a trip, leaving her with just sweet memories and a mix-tape of confusingly melancholy songs. Though she was in a panic, at first, she starts to allow herself to connect to her old thoughts is several ways: meeting her old friends, connecting with her family and exploring where she is in her life since she'd finished high school; she generates a lot of nostalgic thoughts and feeling, trying desperately to find the place she feels she can finally rest herself again. Perhaps seek comfort. Perhaps become someone else.

I feel comfortable in saying my solid bit of negative criticism first: this film simply tries too hard. Trust me, I hate that term as much as anyone. I mean, what the hell does it even mean? Well, as it stands, in this case, I feel that the direct problems that Olivia encounters (on her own) all resolve from a strange desire to find some sort of identity that she wasn't even sure she had in the first place. Look, as a viewer, I don't KNOW this character prior to the introduction to the film, and with her constant sighs and aloof references to her life, I felt we were supposed to be connecting to the character, or at least seeing bits of ourselves in Olivia. It is, however, nearly impossible for us to instantly assimilate our feelings and nostalgic memories based SOLELY on what she's trying to figure out internally. Her constant inner-monologues, explaining her feelings on everything (though generally in relaying off camera memories or interactions) feel like little more than journal entries into a somewhat unfulfilling life. A life that I'm sure so very many people feel themselves experiencing for one reason or another, but this never makes it totally clear or ideal enough to hold itself as a constant story.

However, even with this, it's still a mellow little slice-of-life that I had no problem enjoying, by any means. The story itself doesn't really evolve or change pace suddenly, but neither do people. I think this play-by-play of a girl coming to feel her connections to the world steadily returning to her is still relatable, in a whole, but still feels too small in scale to really make the characters blossom into anything overly fantastic or story-driving as a whole. Personally, I don't think that most of the character additions were terribly necessary. I feel like just about every discussion Oli has with any additional character (her father excluded) were used for little more than jumping points to explain her next monologue, or her exploits off camera... eh, that brings up another interesting point.

**SPOILER**
There is a sex-scene in the latter half of the film that is told via flashback to a high school acquaintance and it, for lack of a better word, kind of fucks up the entire feel leading up to it. It's not that it's particularly exploitative or that Sias is particularly unpleasant to look at but... damn. Why? The last whole scene is so misplaced that it almost feels more exploitative than committed. I'm not totally sure what Muniz's intention was with it, but it certainly felt completely off kilter with the progression of Olivia to that point. I really don't understand. OH WELL, I GUESS.
**END TO THAT TINY AND RATHER INCONSEQUENTIAL SPOILER**

Though, for what it's worth the genuine mechanics of "Olivia" are all fine. The shots are good, the acting from mostly everyone (though, obviously a bit mismatched and ad libbed at times) came off as fairly natural and the basic mechanics of the characters are perfectly passable, but perhaps the well-crafted fundamentals are what inevitably drag down the overall lackluster character story...

In all, I'm not going to pick this movie apart to the bone because I wasn't bored with it, in the end it was just a bit of an anomaly; too bizarrely ordinary to be the arthouse piece of character-story it wants to be and it's too intentionally self-involved to be bored with. It's amazingly unique in some ways, but not enough to be original. It's a movie that, like its main character, doesn't exactly have a true identity.

6.8/10.
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