3 Short Paragraphs: Frequencies

2013, Darren Paul Fisher (Inbetweeners) -- Netflix

I am not sure why, but whenever I see this movie in my mind's eye, I actually see images from Joss Whedon's In Your Eyes. Or more accurately, I see Zoe Kazan. But no, the lead is Eleanor Wyld, from British TV.  The connection probably comes more from the idea of a romance spawning in a fantastical environment. In the movie, everyone is attuned to a frequency. The higher yours, the better your life is, i.e. higher frequencies mean higher probabilities of success. The lower your frequency,  the more unlucky you are. So, while there are smart, educated and hard working people, it really doesn't matter because high frequency means things will go your way. And low frequency people have to work just that much harder, because things are always messing up. Also, the two should never mingle, because then things just get... messy.

Its a Romeo & Juliet story between low frequency Zak and high, very high frequency Marie. But he is desperate to overcome the barrier, is terribly smart and spends much of his youth studying frequencies and experimenting during the one minute of time that they can be near each other, before things start to go kaflooie... yes, that is a scientific term. Not only does he have to overcome science, but also emotion, for the side effect of high frequency is low emotion.

There is a bit of Paul Thomas Anderson here, a bit of Wes Anderson in how Fisher made this movie. Its small, quirky and deliberately set in a world just left of centre from ours. I would like to be as impressed with the movie, as much as Rotten Tomatoes is, but I felt it was just cute. It had a good centre but didn't really draw me in. Perhaps it is overshadowed by the other movie, or perhaps it was my underwhelment, that allowed such to happen.