Why Were So Many Sundance Movies about Break-Ups This Year?

An Over-Simplification of Her Beauty

In recent years, it seems that no Sundance is complete without at least one break-out film about break-ups. Whether it arrives via something intense and dramatic like Blue Valentine or lighthearted and wistful like (500) Days of Summer, romantic angst has seemingly become the festival’s bread and butter. And while this year’s festival didn’t appear to generate a true stand-out in the vein of those earlier films (though you never know – 500 Days didn’t initially feel like it was going to be the hit it later became), it wasn’t for lack of trying. Indeed, break-ups, in all their varied forms, were ubiquitous onscreen at this year’s Sundance.

Sundance Review: Simon Killer

Antonio Campos’s debut feature Afterschool was one of my favorite films of 2008, so I had very high hopes for his follow-up Simon Killer. And while the style is still distinctly his, the new film plays in part like the opposite of the earlier. Whereas Afterschool was heavily structured, with a downright intricate script, Simon seems deliberately disjointed, almost improvised. Whereas Afterschool’s central character was almost catatonically passive, Simon’s protagonist is intensely there, alive and fierce in his tightly-wound little way. And while actors seemed almost like an afterthought in Afterschool (the camera so often wanted to turn away from them), Simon practically hinges on the grand gestures of performance. It may not be as successful as Afterschool, but it feels rawer, more personal – a quality enhanced by its curiously unformed nature.