AARDVARK – Fantastic Fest Review

UPDATE: Jessica Cole was awarded Best Actress in the AMD & Dell “Next Wave” Spotlight Competition at the Fantastic Fest 2011 Awards for his performance in AARDVARK.

Larry Lewis, Jr. is blind, and he’s also an alcoholic. These are the first two things the actor (portraying himself) reveals to the audience, speaking before a AA group meeting in AARDVARK. This also marks the last time Larry’s alcoholism plays into the story, which was initially an issue for me, but given time to digest this bizarre and uncomfortably poignant story, it seems more clear that the events that unfold stem directly from Larry’s struggle to maintain control.

Written and directed by Kitao Sakurai, AARDVARK is a film allegedly based in part on real events from Larry’s life. A man seemingly at constant peace with himself and the world, always calm and smiling, Larry also has an adventurous side. When he happens upon a small jiu jitsu training school, he meets Darren (Darren Branch), a young man of small stature but with a surprisingly vast understanding of the underlying principles of the martial arts and how they should be applied to every ounce of one’s life, rather than simply as a force for causing pain.

Larry befriends Darren and the two men train closely together, forming an odd but sincere friendship. What Larry does not realize at first is that Darren has some serious issues in his life outside of training, issues that directly conflict with his own teachings. Larry is drawn into a life of reckless abandon by Darren and a stripper named Candy (Jessica Cole). This ultimately leads to tragedy, which leads to a mystery, which then leads Larry on a quest for revenge.

Despite the film’s handful of imperfections, I truly enjoyed the experience of AARDVARK. It’s a complicated story, a character study, but also reads like a wholly new take on the much touted “mumblecore” genre which, to this day is rather difficult to explain in any tactile sense. This is very much a slice of life film, but it’s a slice of a very strange life. AARDVARK plays out a little like a docudrama, heavy on the hand held camera work, but also plays with the focus in subtle ways that compliments the subdued neon and halogen colors that Sakurai frequently employs. Along with the lighting scheme, AARDVARK reaches into the ’80s to extract a very specific tone using an organically electronic score reminiscent of Vangelis.

Larry Lewis, Jr. delivers a performance that demands your attention, which is awkward because it can at times feel like gawking at a disabled person, but it’s almost like Larry invites this into his life. Larry seems to enjoy the attention. Conversely, Darren comes off as much more reclusive, digging his proverbial hole deeper and deeper until he can no longer escape. Darren also has some awkwardly eccentric scenes, but are less flashy due to his less eccentric facade. Darren is a character who projects confidence and strength, but is actually incredibly weak and broken inside.

The supporting cast is slightly less enthralling, however definitely serves its purpose. Jessica Cole adds a lovely touch of seduction and playfulness to the story, while Detective Dutch (portrayed by the non-actor, part-time oil rig worker Dutch Crouse) is an over-the-top, stereotypical caricature of Hollywood cops. This sounds like a negative criticism, but the fact is that this works surprisingly well. The rest of the story is rather surreal and strange to begin with that, in some peculiar way, Detective Dutch serves specifically as an occasional dose of comic relief that allows the rest of the story to seem more real.

Sakurai delivers a film unlike anything we’ve seen, but roots AARDVARK in enough familiarity that it’s not entirely foreign to a broader audience. AARDVARK is quirky, but not laughable. It’s philosophical, but not pretentious. The scenes of Larry and Darren training are truly fascinating because they are extremely believable, especially since this is one aspect of Larry’s life that is understood as being based on real life, but even the “fictional” aspects of the story are told with a keen sense of carefully blurring the lines of truth and exaggeration.