I try to avoid the term “Lynchian” in describing a film, but Harrison Atkins’ Sour Minnows not only invites the comparison but also begs for it. A fragile reality, underground entities attaching themselves to unaware carriers, dead or perhaps alive movie stars, Los Angeles as a place of desire and desolation, strangers filming the film someone is watching while it is happening, doppelgängers… Imagine if the hobo behind Winkie’s Diner in Mulholland Drive sat you down and told you a story – that story would be Sour Minnows.
Explaining the plot of Atkins’ film is nigh on impossible. Roommates and cinephiles Ricky (David Brown) and Tepper (Chase Williamson) see something they weren’t supposed to. A group of people licking the road as if it were sensually nourishing them. From that moment they have pierced the veil between the real world and another world inhabited by an entity known as “The Yellow Thing” and before anyone can pronounce “Silencio” Ricky’s life becomes a maze of disturbingly surreal interactions while Tepper seems to become more sedentary on the couch in their no longer logical apartment.
Ricky has been interested in aspiring actress, Aura (Suzanna Son) who he takes on a date to the cinema. Aura’s contact with Ricky might be the inciting incident for “The Yellow Thing” to take an interest in her, or perhaps it was always interested in her. As Sandra (Julia Jones), a survivor of the bizarre stalking explains, there’s no real way to know exactly what or why. It dislikes jazz, grapes will keep you healthier and slow down fevers, and for the rest of your life you will feel like there’s a pressure waiting, pushing, inhabiting, and uncovering a new psychogeography for La La Land that leads to the darkest and most broken places. And there are minnows.
For Ricky, whose job it is to analyse AI interactions, life is already teetering on the edge of hallucination (and extreme isolation). People talk to AI voice chat bots whose responses are not terrific, but let’s face it, neither is the fact a company is taking the personal conversations with their product and having people listen in. In some manner Ricky’s job is already a kind of subtle violation that echoes the increasingly less subtle violations of “The Yellow Thing.” Atkins takes some of the conversations Ricky is hearing and uses them with excellent results, especially in a scene in a shopping mall where Aura loses herself and is drawn in to acting as one of “The Yellow Thing’s” human puppets.
Harrison Atkins’ low-fi aesthetic works a treat with the subject matter. Everything seems to be at the edge of a place where entry has a cost. Whether that be Hollywood and whatever price dead/alive movie star Jojo (Phil Burgers) paid, a strange red room party, or the half-remembered attacks by masked men, or Ricky’s favourite director wanting to make his screenplay. A strong through-line of satire keeps Sour Minnows from feeling too indulgent, but as much as it is satirical, the film is disturbing and deliciously confounding.
Chase Williamson and Suzanna Son are excellent supports for David Brown’s Ricky who reminded me of an early 1990s background actor suddenly thrust into the bright (dark) lights without the vocabulary to explain how he got there. Sour Minnows is inventive, bizarre, funny, and utterly nightmarish. I found the paths it travelled smart and familiar in its portrayal of alienation. Whatever Harrison Atkins cooks up next, consider me intrigued.
Director and writer: Harrison Atkins
Cast: David Brown, Chase Williamson, Suzanna Son, Julia Jones
Composer: Ryu Yoshizawa
Sour Minnows played at Fantasia International Film Festival and will also be playing at MIFF.