CAROLINE AND JACKIE documents one very long night with some rather vapid characters
CAROLINE AND JACKIE (Adam Christian Clark, 2012)
Tuesday, April 24, Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, 9:00
Saturday, April 28, AMC Loews Village 7, 9:00
www.tribecafilm.com
Writer-director Adam Christian Clark’s feature-length debut, Caroline and Jackie, has nothing to do with the Kennedys. It also turns out to be more of a fictionalized version of a conglomeration of reality-show television series than a coherent narrative, albeit one with some powerful, effective moments. Jackie (Bitsie Tullouch) at first thinks that her sister, Caroline (Marguerite Moreau), has come to visit her to celebrate Caroline’s birthday. But Caroline turns the tables on Jackie, instead throwing a surprise party for Jackie before changing gears once again and staging an intervention, claiming Jackie is a pill-addicted anorexic, which Jackie adamantly denies. Thrust in the middle is Jackie’s boyfriend, Ryan (David Giuntoli). The three of them spend a long, complicated, emotional night together, along with some friends, examining one another as well as themselves, reaching some rather unpleasant conclusions. Clark, who has directed the American version of Big Brother and the Chinese reality show Fashion Star, had the actors improvise much of the dialogue (based on a specific outline), resulting in a choppy story with incongruent lines and characters that are hard to like or even care about. Every time the film seems to be heading in a better direction, particularly in scenes featuring only Ryan and Jackie, it slips back, getting lost in terrain better left to Jersey Shore, The Real World, and, well, Big Brother. In his director’s statement, Clark, who has been based in Los Angeles since he was eighteen and is now thirty-one, explained, “In being truly honest, we have to admit that we are all vapid.” Actually, no we don’t.