American Cherry (2023), by Marcella Cytrynowicz
There is genre cinema and there is gender cinema. And sometimes the two of them collide. In cinema, genre is a category where a film can be placed according to its themes, tones, and characteristics. Examples of movie genres are: comedy, action, drama, musical, thrillher. Gender in cinema can be discussed, for instance, when a film is directed by a woman, which is — but shouldn’t be — an “exception”. Women can direct movies of any genres, but it’s rarer to find, for instance, women directing thrillers. One exception is the new “American Cherry”, directed by Marcella Cytrynowicz.
Finn (Hart Denton) and Eliza (Sarah May Sommers) meet in strange circumstances. He’s casually lying in the middle of the road, when a car stops and Eliza is passing by. Soon they are together in missions such as rescuing Eliza’s drunken mother from a bar. He films her for a kind of documentary he’s making, and she relies on him when things get difficult in her family life. She says she feels safe with him, but this feeling won’t last long, as Finn will become obsessed with Eliza.
Eliza’s mother Louise (Leonor Varela) was married to Dale (John Honey), the father of Corinna (Audrey Holcomb), Eliza’s schoolmate. They split because of conjugal problems and also because of Louise’s drinking, but Louise still hopes for reconciliation and that someday they will be a family again. Soon Finn will act in a creepy way around Louise as well.
Finn seems cute with Eliza, even though he’s a troubled teenager who has just been expelled from school. The one major red flag in their relationship is the lying: he lies to her, saying that his parents are dead. He also gets nervous, to the point of screaming violently, when she takes the camera and starts filming him.
It’s hinted that Finn suffers from some kind of mental illness. He had to take pills as a child and said that the pills made him “feel nothing”. If this subplot was btter explored, “American Cherry” would have been a better, more interesting movie overall.
“American Cherry” was written and directed by Marcella Cytrynowicz, who debuted in filmmaking as a music video director. She builds the leads’ relationship slowly, so we feel that we’re watching a romantic movie, not a thriller. What actually creates the thrill is the eerie soundtrack, and not, as we should have expected, Hart Denton’s performance. He only looks as if he was focusing on a blank point in order to seem psycho. That being said, “American Cherry” may not be the best thriller out there, but it’s competent indie filmmaking.
