re: the guatemalan handshake

Last week a friend and I, shoeless and be-wined, discovered Todd Rohal’s The Guatemalan Handshake at the VIFC. Because I am generally bad at life, I had never heard about this film until that afternoon, over two years after its release. This was probably why the audience was small, but that just gave my companion and I opportunity to loll about (with aforementioned shoelessness) and broadcast our(aforementioned be-wined) delight without really being in anyone’s way.

Well, we probably were, but I’d like to imagine the crowd eyeing us with good “oh, forbear the raucous children on a summer’s eve” humour. And the darkly quirky but inevitably heart-warming film totally justified my imagining.

The plot is linear…esque…but you have only the middle of that line, hopelessly and wonderfully tangled, with pregnant pauses and musical vignettes providing emotional exposition. Basically, it’s art house without pretensions: a young girl missing her friend, tragically misplaced turtles, pregnant derby drivers, delightful (or harrowing) asides and moments of quiet perfection. It’s just honest and awkward and human and I smiled and smiled.

See this with someone who can not be a smartass for, like, two seconds?

(And though many reading this will scoff, I am a down and dirty, puppies and musicals romantic at heart. If you are anything like this, this movie will utterly destroy you.)

VIFC’s website describes it as thus:

In the confusion following a massive power outage, an awkward demolition derby driver (Will Oldham) vanishes, setting in motion a series of events affecting his pregnant girlfriend, his helplessly car-less father, a pack of boy scouts, a lactose-intolerant roller-rink employee, a woman in search of her dog, and his best friend—a girl named Turkeylegs. Cars drive circles in the dirt, a woman attends her own funeral, the sun rises sideways, and an orange vehicle trades hands again and again. “A revelation... The Guatemalan Handshake holds a place in my heart that is normally reserved for Easter candy”—Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite).

Now go and revel. REVEL!