Film

Art House

Beeswax

by Charles Mudede

You cannot get more art house than Beeswax, Andrew Bujalski's third feature. The film has no other home than the art house and the festival circuit. Who else could watch a film about twins who live in a bohemian world of postgraduate learning, vintage clothing stores, marches for gay rights, and so on and so forth? Only the people who love the art house with a passion. But the film is also an impressive work of new American cinema. Bujalski manages to do what most filmmakers of his generation can't—namely, turn hipsters into interesting film subjects. Hipsters essentially do not have a narrative; to be a hipster is to be much like Lauren (Maggie Hatcher), the sister who can walk (the other, Jeannie, is disabled). Lauren has no real goal in life. Every day is pretty much the same: a little soccer, a little sex, a little laughing, a little pot, a little hanging out with friends. That mode of life just does not translate into an entertaining character. But by filming Lauren's bohemian world with great attention to the details of its spaces, bodies, facial expressions, habits of speech, manner of walk, sitting, eating, drinking, Bujalski is able to produce something like a symphony of the ordinary, or less dramatically and more precisely, a sweet piece of music out of what is mostly "empty time," the time that simply passes you by. If Beeswax is part of the mumblecore movement (Bujalski did contribute writing to a mumblecore classic, Hannah Takes the Stairs), then it is one of its highest artistic achievements. Northwest Film Forum, Oct 30—Nov 5 at 7, 9 pm.