Gravitas Ventures
I’d like to formally request a brief moratorium on writer/actor/director in one for a while. Limiting that triad to even two can be a bit much, but all three is too much insularity. Now, it’s not to say that such people can never have a great film, but in general I feel like I’ve seen more cases of ‘trying to be important and look at me’ than actually being or saying something important. Still, I can appreciate the effort — writing is hard enough, let alone directing, let alone acting! Not everyone has even one of those talents.
One Hour Outcall is an indie film directed by T. Arthur Cottam, and written by William Norrett in his first film — he’s written some novels and the like before. William Norrett also stars as Greg, a middle aged man who’s been hiring a call girl named Esmeralda (Natalia Ochoa) for quite a few weeks or so. The movie starts off in a particularly confusing way, cutting a few seconds between moments in time that span a completely unknown period. So we’re off center and unsure of what’s happening, for a long time.
Eventually you can piece together that Esmeralda is really named Ana, and their relationship has moved from casually interesting to potentially legitimate connection to some sort of falling out. But these jumps happen so often and seemingly at random, so it takes perhaps an hour until I was able to understand the actual storyline of the movie.
Having a nonlinear approach to a movie is nothing new, many have done it, from the easier to follow ones like Pulp Fiction to the inverted timelines of Memento or confusing timelines of Primer or the absolute brilliance of Arrival — I mean Rashomon basically invented the idea. But I haven’t seen something this sporadically timed that I can remember.
Natalia Ochoa is given an unenviable task of portraying someone in states of everything from casual seduction to horrified betrayal, and she really does pull it off. She has a kind of subtle charm that makes it easy to watch her — although sometimes the movie makes odd choices in terms of sound editing; sometimes it sounds like she’s in an echoey room or something when nothing would indicate such.
The dialogue stretches from realistic and meaningful to too clever by half, but things greatly improve when the movie starts slowing down on the timeline jumping. Unfortunately William Norrett is a bit of a stiff actor, not really showing that much range, and it stands out more when contrasted against his scene partner who is so much better. There are choices Greg as a character makes that I felt like didn’t feel justified, partially because of the acting — I don’t know if this was a vanity project or a necessity to cast himself as the successful older man who’s connecting with a young woman (despite his other flaws).
Eventually the movie reveals some twists and turns along the way, nothing particularly shocking, but the gimmick of rapidly jumping between timelines is more troublesome and disorienting than it is clever or revelatory. I actually think that there was a potential for a really sort of fascinating psychological tale here, all of the pieces are basically here — the weaknesses are the over reliance on temporal confusion and Greg’s iffy acting in the more complicated moments.
Regardless, I do legitimately feel that Natalia Ochoa has some great potential here, and there are some side characters that have a touch of intrigue to them. The story may be a bit pat and cliché and yes, a bit too pleased with itself, but there’s a spark of something that’s different — it’s just a shame that it doesn’t hit the potential I know it could’ve hit.
Planning to see One Hour Outcall? Click on the image below to see the movie, and be sure to come back and tell us what you thought!
One Hour Outcall has a run time of 1 hour 25 minutes and is not rated.
Gravitas Ventures
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