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It takes a certain confidence for a film to open as does, with the exhortation to . “What do you see? Focus,” a disembodied voice instructs, inviting the viewer to pore over details. Perhaps you take note of the figure slumped on the sidewalk, or the other bodies moving behind windows.

Maybe you drink in the grimness of the industrial New Jersey setting, or the brittleness of the heroine (Ariella Mastroianni). rewards you for all this looking with an eye for striking imagery and careful compositions. But the act of observation can also imply a certain remove.



As painstakingly crafted as this mystery-thriller is, it remains something to be admired from a distance rather than felt viscerally. Arguably, its chilliness reflects its heroine’s own sense of disconnection. When we meet her, Frankie (Mastroianni) is deep into a progressive neurological disease that causes her to lose time to what are essentially sober blackouts.

To keep her condition at bay, she spends nearly every waking minute listening to homemade cassette tapes reminding herself to stay alert; that’s her voice at the start prompting her to take stock of her surroundings, lest she zone out and lose hours to the black hole of her memory. Ryan J. Sloan, a former New Jersey electrician making his feature filmmaking debut, brings us into Frankie’s headspace with a ’70s-style grittiness.

A shaky handheld camera reflects the instability of Frankie’s reality, with a graininess that adds extra scruff to the d.

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