Writer-director Anthony Meindl has been operating his own acting workshop and has been a highly-acclaimed acting teacher. His latest project is a triptych. His triptych shows us the relationships between three people leading up to their presence in three, different, mass shootings. From what I could gather, the three people are fictional, but the mass shootings are real or based on three, real, mass shootings. The most recent is the mass shooting on June 12, 2016, at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. This one is probably the mass shooting that affected Meindl the most. At that point, it was the deadliest, mass shooting in the United States' history with 49 innocent people killed. The shooting the following year in Las Vegas would eclipse that number of people killed and injured, but, at that time, which is presumably the time that Meindl wrote this film, Orlando had the deadliest shooting. What's also notable is that Pulse was specifically a gay nightclub or one that catered mostly to LGBTQ persons. Meindl is himself openly gay, so obviously this particular mass shooting probably had more of an effect on him. What's also notable is that on the evening of June 12, Pulse hosted "Latin Night," meaning most of the people there were Latino or Hispanic.
Matt Pascua stars as Raul, a young Hispanic guy who finds himself in that nightclub on June 12. The film though focuses on the days, the weeks and possible months, leading up to that shooting. Specifically, the focus is on Raul's relationship with an older white guy named Ricky, played by Meindl himself. It starts off with showing the obvious physical attraction between the two of them, but, as they spend more time together, more issues start to arise.
Ricky is older, 49, but he's in great, muscular shape and could be described as a "leather daddy." He's also pretty wealthy or well-off enough to have a nice home in Orlando with a in-ground pool in his backyard. Raul isn't necessarily staying in a relationship with Ricky because he's wealthy, but Ricky assumes so at one point. Raul does seem to like Ricky, but Raul is probably 21, so less than half the age of Ricky. That age-gap does become more pronounced where Raul just wants to go out to bars and nightclubs and Ricky wants to be at home more. It also gets more pronounced when it's clear that Raul doesn't want to be monogamous and Ricky does. Both of their positions isn't exactly due to age but age becomes their whipping post.
Olivia Taylor Dudley (
The Magicians and
Aquarius) also stars as Elena Peterson, a woman who is an English as Second Language, or ESL teacher at a learning center in Binghamton, New York. She's present for the mass shooting that occurred on April 3, 2009 at Binghamton's American Civic Association where 13 innocent people were killed. Most of the victims were immigrants, trying to learn English and become American citizens. Elena helps specifically a man named Khalid, played by pop star
Siva Kaneswaran. Khalid is a Libyan immigrant who wants to become a zoologist.
Mainly, what we see of Elena is her struggling to raise her son. She seems like she's a single mother, but she does have a husband. Unfortunately, her husband possibly has a gambling addiction and isn't contributing much to the marriage. Elena even suspects that he's taking money from her. Her husband is also revealed to be very abusive, both verbally and physically. He is an obvious misogynist. Given his comments toward Khalid, it's clear that he's racist as well. Having known nothing about the Binghamton mass shooting, it's easy to assume that someone like Elena's husband perpetrated the crime. Yet, reading about the mass shooting reveals that someone like Elena's husband had nothing to do with it. However, domestic terrorism, including mass shootings, by men like Elena's husband who could be described as white nationalists, are on the rise in this country, so it makes sense that Meindl would point more to a villain like Elena's husband, played by
Zak Steiner.
Camille de Pazzis also stars as Adele, a French woman who was present for the mass shooting on November 13, 2015 in Paris. Actually, the mass shooting that night was part of a grander, terrorist attack that took place all over the city. Adele was specifically at a music concert that was targeted. That concert was held at the Bataclan Theatre. For that shooting, there was a neighbor who
recorded video on his phone of people trying to escape out of the back of the theater. One of those people was a woman who climbed out the window and was hanging from the ledge. In this film, Adele is that woman, and Meindl imagines what her life was leading up to that moment.
Adele is married and pregnant. Right before going to the concert, she and her husband have dinner and go dancing with another couple. Through their conversations, it's revealed that the dynamic between Adele and her husband François, played by Nicolas Berger-Vachon, is akin to that of Raul and Ricky. It's also akin to that between Elena and her husband. Adele is more liberal and carefree, wanting to have fun. François is more conservative and hostile toward immigrants. Their conversations also bring out what it means for people to be happy in relation to others.
It's a bit harrowing when Meindl's film pivots away from relationship drama to depictions of the mass shootings. It's not any graphic depictions. He's not like Paul Greengrass in that sense. He doesn't go much farther than letting us hear gunshots and see the terrified looks on people's faces. There's no scene where we really see anyone get shot. He does incorporate documentary footage and the scariest bit is the aforementioned video of the woman hanging from the ledge. The truly scary thing is before the end credits, Meindl scrolls a list of all the mass shootings that have occurred since 2013 and it's a list that feels like it's in the hundreds, if not thousands.
Meindl's film though offers no solutions or argues for anything that could stop or address these mass shootings substantively. What can be extrapolated are platitudes about enjoying life, living life to the fullest, not taking anything for granted, appreciating and accepting the people in your life as they are. These are things taken from Raul and Adele's stories. Elena's story is very far afield in that it's about an obvious abusive circumstance that doesn't exactly have the nuance or gray area of the others. Unlike a filmmaker, such as Clint Eastwood who has tackled a lot of real-life scenarios and tragedies, Meindl's film doesn't take an ideological stance, beyond mass shootings being a bad thing and relationships are difficult. Otherwise, this film could be seen as a tribute to the people lost and affected by those mass shootings, even though we don't learn anything specific about anyone who was actually there. This is more of a metaphorical tribute.
Not Rated but for mature audiences.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 30 mins.
Available on Hulu.
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