Self help author John Tarnoff says, “In order to create your future, you have to reconcile your past.” It’s good advice for his boomer audience, the over 50s who may be looking to reconnect and restart their lives. It’s also a theme that runs through “Into Invisible Light,” a new film starring Jenifer Dale.
Dale, who co-wrote the script with director Shelagh Carter, plays Helena Grayson a recently widowed woman who can only claim the inheritance if she heads a foundation for young artists. Sitting in the big chair, she has to figure out who gets support and who doesn’t. She’s thrust into the world of artists despite having given up her artistic objectives years ago. This leads to her to explore her own ambition, to write again. Writing allows her to find her voice again, to examine a life that felt inconsequential and repressed without an artistic outlet. Helping her spark joy is Michael (Peter Keleghan), a Samuel-Beckett-quoting former flame, now a writing professor. Examining her past, just as Tarnoff suggests, leads the way to her future.
“Into Invisible Light” is a movie for adults; a film for people who have lived a life and are in process, looking to start over again. It’s a finely tuned story of second chances that eloquently essays a reawakening.
Densely written, this thoughtful examination of Helena’s new phase of life is supported by elegant cinematography courtesy of Ousama Rawi and a moody, stark score by Shawn Pierce. It occasionally takes itself a bit too seriously, leaning on minor chord drama for effect, but the lingering effect is one of hopeful rebirth.
No one will accuse “Clara” director/co-writer Akash Sherman of playing it safe. For his debut feature the twenty-something filmmaker essays no less a topic than the existence of life in outer space.
Suits star Patrick J. Adams is Dr. Isaac Bruno, a university professor placed on sabbatical when his obsession to find life on other planets gets in the way of him doing his job. Time off is no remedy for his fixation and he continues his search with the help of a co-worker Dr. Charlie Durant (Ennis Esmer ) and a research assistant named Clara (Troian Bellisario).
Bruno is a facts and figures guy, a pragmatist who studies the data looking for connections, desperate to fill the hole left in his heart by the death of his child by finding new life in the universe.
Clara is more abstract, a believer in the randomness of the universe beyond the numbers and maps. The push and pull between their approaches makes for a rocky relationship but her spiritualism may hold the roadmap for Isaac’s quest.
Austere, low-key and yet ambitious, “Clara” is about the power of loss and discovery. Add in a big dollop of spirituality and you have a movie that isn’t quite sci fi even though it spends much of its time ruminating on speculative themes. It’s solemn and often feels overwrought, asking question after question without offering much in the way of insight or true emotion.
Director Sherman shows an undeniable eye for composition and atmosphere. It’s in the storytelling that “Clara” wobbles. The push-and-pull between objectivity and intuition is interesting but overplayed to the point of exhaustion. The climax reaches for the stars, offering a hopeful note, that will strike some as poetic, others as the very definition of schmaltz.
