Unidentified Objects
The universe is vast, mysterious, glorious and beyond comprehension, so in all the diverse dazzling complexity of the stars, planets, nebulae and the myriad lifeforms which inhabit just a single planet it is no surprise that occasionally there will be errors, something which Peter considers himself to be, a gay, college-educated, balding dwarf prone to illness, an unwanted member of a community which prides itself on inclusivity yet which is more interested in physical perfection than intellectual development and shuns deviation.
Other problems are more immediate, such as Winona, a neighbour from Peter’s apartment block who urgently needs passage from New York to Canada and is desperate enough to knock on a stranger’s door on the strength of an overhead conversation which led her to believe Peter has access to a car, the stories she makes up ridiculous but easier to believe than the truth that in three days she is going to be taken by “the Bridge People” to the galaxy of Andromeda.
Directed by Juan Felipe Zuleta from a script co-written with Leland Frankel, New Amsterdam‘s Matthew August Jeffers and The Mortuary Collection‘s Sarah Hay are ill-matched road buddies with two and a half million light years to travel with more in common than Peter might like to admit, both of them outsiders whose acceptance by the mainstream will always be conditional, oddities to be tolerated but not quite understood, the Unidentified Objects of the title.
Peter conscious that he cannot ever belong in a meaningful way, not helped by his abrasive rebuffal of those who reach out with what he sees as condescension, he is a frustrated recluse whose life is intruded upon by Winona who makes little attempt to be understanding or appreciative of the disruption she has caused, not cruel but just not seeing beyond her own needs, consumed by need to escape her life on Earth, she a true believer while he believes in nothing but an inevitable tragic end.
Rejecting connection because he has never had the chance to enjoy it, Peter is profoundly lonely but is still willing to take a foolish, misguided chance when the opportunity apparently presents itself in one of the most tender moments of the film, a stranger in a bar (Mayor of Kingstown‘s Hamish Allan-Headley) a misidentified object, and while Peter’s fantasies may be less outlandish they are no less powerful.
Winona’s hopes built around a single improbable event, Unidentified Objects sets itself an impossible challenge to resolve itself satisfactorily, inevitably sidestepping the issue by moving into an ambiguous conclusion, but offering glimpses into the dream visions of who Peter and Winona might have been in another realm it sets itself a more achievable goal, a film to be felt rather than necessarily understood.
Unidentified Objects is playing at the Fragments Film Festival which runs until Sunday 1st October
