PiaPuffytail
* * Please note, there are spoilers below * * The Girls on Liberty Street is a Kickstarter movie about an 18-year old Hispanic girl named Brianna who has elected to join the army. In general, this seems to be a good decision for her as there is not much future in her neighborhood. Her parents work long hours and are almost never there, and Brianna is "the third parent" helping to take care of her two younger siblings, do the house work, et cetera.The story is meant to show us the days leading up to her departure as she says goodbye to the people in her life, and as she comes to grips with the ramifications of this decision.That's fine, in theory. And I recognize that this was filmed on what they call a "microbudget". As such, there are going to be places where significant improvement can be made. I didn't expect explosions and special effects, but you don't need a lot of money to have great dialogue. You don't really even need a lot of money to find some decent actors who are willing to work for next to nothing to get into a movie.Unfortunately, this movie had none of those things. I hate to hate on it, because I understand that this was someone's vision, and I don't doubt that some people worked hard on it. But I will tell you what this movie is: It's long periods of silence broken up by stilted, repetitious dialogue uttered by teenagers who can barely manage the energy to enunciate. People talk over each other constantly, almost no one is identified. All of the "characters" are played by people whose real names are used in lieu of actual character names. And yet we don't know who half of them are.For example, the main character, Brianna, has two female friends with which she shares several scenes. We have no idea what their names are. They have absolutely nothing to offer to the story line. They speak over each other constantly, and it makes no difference to the viewer which one is even speaking. They are given pretty cringe-worthy dialogue. I guess a point could be made that it does sound authentically like teenagers, but I often feel like "realism" is the word used to explain utter banality in films.The one bit of plot we are given and meant to wonder about - Brianna's friendship with Patricia, and why they're not really speaking - is never really resolved. Patricia visits the night before Brianna leaves, but beyond Brianna saying, "I was really mad at you," they don't really discuss what happened.I also do not think that any of the "actors" did terribly well. Again, I understand they're not really professional actors, but come on. The main character should emote *something* for most of a movie. But instead she just wandered from here to there with a vacant expression on her face. And many others in this movie used the same technique.Now, it's not all bad. There are some things I noticed that were good storytelling. For example, Brianna's mother Norma is mostly only seen on the way out the door. She's always leaving for work, advising the girls to do various chores that day. The father is barely visible at all, and when he is in a scene we rarely see his face. This gives the impression of how hardworking the parents are, and how much responsibility Brianna has at home.Another subtle storytelling device is the news on in the background in several scenes. Each time the news anchor is reporting violence, particularly in places where U.S. troops might be, which makes Brianna's enlistment more poignant and real.This film is not BAD, per se. But a good ten minutes of pure, awkward silence could be taken out. And if you then removed all of the pointless repetition and filler "Um"s and "you know"s and "like"s, I really think this could be pared down to half an hour.
