With great fascination, I watched the excellent "Hello & Goodbye" through its ending credit scroll, during which a screen shot states, "We had a cast of 2 and 5 crew...just twelve people made this film happen." If you truly love what beats in the heart of soulful indie filmmaking, you'll see it in spades throughout "Hello & Goodbye," and will recognize that statement as a well-earned source of pride.
The film introduces us to a couple autopsying their breakup throughout the course of a single rejoined night together. This two-person show consists of Drew (Peter Weidman) and Beth (Tybee Diskin). They're awkwardly trying to be friends, but wounds are raw. It comes to pass that "Hello & Goodbye" is a terrifically well-acted film -- "indie" or otherwise -- and the actors expertly sell the aching tenderness of a newly-separated couple in post-traumatic exploration mode.
At its best, independent filmmaking can outflank its major studio counterparts by avoiding the sheen and artifice Hollywood surely would have slathered all over this movie. "Hello & Goodbye" rises to this exact benchmark as art which truly reflects "real life." And that's not always something we can say about films playing at the local enormodome.
The film introduces us to a couple autopsying their breakup throughout the course of a single rejoined night together. This two-person show consists of Drew (Peter Weidman) and Beth (Tybee Diskin). They're awkwardly trying to be friends, but wounds are raw. It comes to pass that "Hello & Goodbye" is a terrifically well-acted film -- "indie" or otherwise -- and the actors expertly sell the aching tenderness of a newly-separated couple in post-traumatic exploration mode.
At its best, independent filmmaking can outflank its major studio counterparts by avoiding the sheen and artifice Hollywood surely would have slathered all over this movie. "Hello & Goodbye" rises to this exact benchmark as art which truly reflects "real life." And that's not always something we can say about films playing at the local enormodome.