Mouth to Mouth (2005)

Fresh and Exciting

Did you people see the same film I saw?

An Exercise In Nonsense

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I found this movie on Netflix streaming movies. I had recently re-watched 'Juno' and wanted to see a few other roles Ellen Page had before she became famous. The title comes from an early scene where some 'SPARK' members are demonstrating mouth-to-mouth one evening in the streets of Berlin. There also is a much later scene where it was used to try to save someone. But on a more symbolic level it could apply to what the members of the SPARK cult provide for each other, for survival.Ellen Page is London high-schooler Sherry . She just doesn't seem to identify with the rigid life and decides to just go away, joining up with the others in SPARK, headed eventually to Portugal in the SPARK bus. Natasha Wightman plays Sherry's mother, Rose , soon hitting the road to look for Sherry, and quite unexpectedly finds her.Eric Thal is the defacto leader of SPARK, and as is the case with cults, he makes the rules and decides what the punishment is if someone breaks them. But his method is even more insidious, he befriends the prettiest, has sex with them, then shuns them. As Sherry finds out the hard (no pun intended) way. As they eventually stand up to him, explaining he 'sucks the souls out of people.'I suppose the main thrust of the story is the overused 'coming of age' experience, this for Sherry. She finally wises up and breaks free, but in a twist her mother decides staying with SPARK is what she really wants out of life.It is not an easy movie to watch, mainly because you know there are street people like that all over. But it is a good watch for Ellen Page, she is amazingly good.

My two favorite topics of all time are cults and homeless teen runaways. I've written several stories combining the two. Other than Jimmy and Judy (2006), which sells its characters more as fugitives than homeless, I have never seen these two subjects merged on screen before. Mouth to Mouth should be my favorite movie.The problem is that throughout the film I couldn't shake the feeling that writer/director Alison Murray was my hippie guidance counselor who had written this film after listening to a Henry Rollins spoken word album.Murray does a good enough job of depicting the allure of cults for troubled youths. Mind you, this is not the kind of cult that I would like to join and their objectives are rather contrived and obvious, but the parties look fun all the same. And the film does look great. There are dazzling shots with fire and dual movement. But the fire and the actors (who, for the most part are all very good) are meant to remind viewers of Burning Man.Relationships become overly sentimental while the film refuses to accept that it is anything but subtle. This turns out to be a real problem because the characters display intense and irrational behavior but, because they are not allowed to at any point explain their actions or emotions, they become unrealistic.The film moves from presenting us with clever solutions for homeless teens to preaching to us about the dangers of cults too quickly. We are never given the opportunity to rationalize or justify Harry's (Eric Thal) actions. The switch is flipped from fun family (that is clearly a cult) to evil controlling cult. This again denies the film subtlety and realism.This is both a coming of age movie in a fun setting and a sort of hip after school special. Audiences are told to use their imagination to find redemption in the ending and Ellen Page is back where she started after learning some 'valuable life lessons'.But what are we left with for having watched this? If you don't like overblown coming-of-age flicks that promise more thrills than they deliver and you already know not to be seduced by a cult, then not a whole lot.

What can I say about this? Nothing about it is inherently bad (well okay, most of the acting is, but aside from that very obvious fact); it's mostly just a very plodding even boring film of often silly, predictable nothingness. You have your standard stereotypes everywhere, but none of the characters are in any way likable, which in itself doesn't necessarily cause me a problem and maybe this is just the type of film where no one needs to be liked, but either way. It even fails to explore the nature of a cult more deeply (or even at all), which was a wasted opportunity.One last thing, I've seen a few mentions of this being realistic. My a**e is it realistic! People seem to think that if a film's made on a low budget with no special effects and bad acting that it's realistic. Please stop mistaking hard to watch with realism.

Directly preceding "Hard Candy", the film that made her name, "Mouth to Mouth" is Ellen Page's break-out movie and it's easy to see why. Her performance as Sherry, a lost young girl in Eastern Europe finding sanctuary with a group of sub-hippies, is a standout in it's bravery and sheer physicality.Sherry (Page) is a runaway from Canada loose in Germany who takes up with a group called SPARK (Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge), a group of similarly adrift young people taken under the wing of Harry (Eric Thal), an older man with high ideals. Other notable people in the group include fun-loving Nancy (Beatrice Brown) and friendly, zany Mad Ax (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos). Sherry shares a conflicted relationship with her mother (Natasha Wightman) who joins the group in an effort to reclaim her, but the two of them come under strain when it's clear that Harry is less interested in high ideals and more interested in controlling the group by any means necessary...The central of themes of how ideals are subverted in the name of power, even with this group of so-called radicals, are realised in the latter part of the film where Harry sets his group to work on a vineyard where his true motivations become clear. While this is very interesting to watch, I still thought more could have been done with it. As good a character as Harry is as written, Eric Thal does not seem to have the range to make his transformation truly register emotionally. Consequently a good part of the film falls down.It is Page, of course, that saves the movie although even she is not quite at her best here. Her performance does not have the wit of her "X-Men" and "Juno" appearances, nor the edge she would acquire doing "Hard Candy". Nevertheless there is a strong and truthful physicality in her presence that registers best in unspoken moments, especially the roadside exchanges between her and Wightman, and later McCabe-Lokos. These two scenes are like a dance, yet seem perfectly natural and it's difficult to imagine another actor doing them this well."Mouth to Mouth" is Region 1 and hard to find in this country, but it is worth looking up anyway for it's interesting themes and Page's central performance.