My First Film review – charismatic new star beefs up audacious grad school-style project

Rising star Odessa Young brings just the right amount of spontaneity, youthful exuberance and charisma to keep this hyperdimensional little ouroboros of a story about the actual director’s film-making experiences from seeming insufferably self-indulgent. So credit should also go to director Zia Anger herself for decent helming and casting instincts, because it all sort of works, even if it feels like a grad school project gone rogue.

Young plays Vita, a young woman who wants to make a movie that is more or less about herself, even though in her voiceover she keeps foregrounding the differences between her real story and the fiction she is creating. “Real” Vita has two mothers, a couple who conceived Vita with the help of a gay male friend; also, as an adult, Vita has had two abortions. In the film she’s making, starring her friend Dina (Devon Ross), the character based on Vita has had only one abortion and has only one mother who has gone missing.

Working with a tiny, inexperienced and often stoned crew, Vita and Dina slog through arduous days on set, trying to film the time in Vita’s life some years ago when she got pregnant. The shoot goes badly, with a number of near-accidents leading up to a drunken night that gets so out of control a cast member drives off smashed and wraps his truck around a telegraph pole. Will the film ever get finished, or will it end up listed as “abandoned”, like Anger’s first film (which shares a title with the movie Vita and co are shooting: Always All Ways, Anne Marie)?

There is nothing subtle about the way the film draws parallels between pregnancy and artistic creation, but the slippery editing and different textures of film stock make it seem artful. At one point, the work of Maya Deren gets referenced with a big thud; if you’re going to pay homage to a great artist, you might as well make it obvious and steal from one of the best. By the end, when an abortion is “performed” through the magic of mime, you can’t help but admire Anger’s audacity, sly humour and film-making chops.