US | 2008 | Directed by Jason Bognacki
Logline: A desperate woman descends into a fantasy nightmare world imagining her disturbed reality as two separate alternate versions of herself.
It appears as a forty-minute descent into the fractured, tortured, delusional mind of Fabi (Becky Altringer), an obese woman in an abusive relationship with a psychopath who goes by the name of Skylar (David Fine), the evil brother of Bob from Twin Peaks, pock-marked with piercing, oily pools for eyes.
A boulevard of broken dreams, the sunset strip where the sun has long gone down and the strip has been beaten. Tinseltown in a dark and heavy rain, but dry as a desert bone, and the birds of prey are hovering. These Hollywood dreams have become a nightmare.
Has Fabi conjured two alternate beautiful, but no less damaged versions of herself; Loma (Aline Avakian), whose eyes are perpetually censored in some kind of strange shield of identity from the fourth wall, and Lynda (Iglesias Estefania), a voluptuous dark velvet woman who falls into the same tenebrous pit of snakes as her doppelganger.
Or is it Lynda’s distorted minds eye that we witness this perverse, yet seductive slide. This is an oneiric realm reminiscent of David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Dario Argento; a giallo-esque ciné fabric that is torn asunder by its own darkened dream weavings.
Neither Lynda, nor Loma, ever utters a word; a striking, undulating visual narrative, and a resonating soundtrack mostly drive the film, with Skylar’s voice puncturing the serenity with musings of domestic violence and stolen identity. Immorality dances with mortality.
Auteur Bognacki has created this compelling and enigmatic teaser, and has since completed another extended short, Beyond the Red Door, soon to be unleashed, forming the second half of what will become an 80-minute feature movie, The Red Door. I can’t wait to experience the fully fleshed psychogenic fugue of Loma Lynda, as she attempts to escape her reality and pass through the phantasy frame of the red door into some kind of blissful, tragic oblivion.
