In the wake of a breakup, a woman squats in her ex-lover’s lake house and becomes enamored of a mysterious teenager. This trite premise is stretched glacially over 90 minutes in “Clementine,” an erotic thriller that runs low on both erotics and thrills.
We meet Karen (Otmara Marrero) in the cryptic, nearly wordless opening scenes as she watches old videos of her and her ex, tries to rescue a dog from someone’s home, and leaves Los Angeles, only to then break into an elegant lake house in the Pacific Northwest. The house, we eventually learn, belongs to Karen’s ex-girlfriend — an older artist named D. (Sonya Walger), whom we hear on some angry phone calls but don’t see for most of the film.
Soon, Karen meets Lana (Sydney Sweeney), an enigmatic young local, and the film’s intersecting themes of age, power and desire come into focus. “You’re only old when you know what you want and that you’ll never have it,” Karen says to Lana. The questions of who wants whom and whether or not they can have them become the central, shifting source of tension.
But this push-and-pull of attraction is explored rather superficially in “Clementine,” written and directed by Lara Jean Gallagher. Lana, as the Lolita-esque temptress who dreams of Hollywood, feels particularly flat: The character’s affected drawl and cutesy antics (which include chucking a peeled clementine insouciantly into the water) are far too caricatured to be believable even as adolescent posturing. And although the camera’s attention to faces and gazes, coupled with an eerie soundtrack, conjures a vague mood of suspense and seduction, the plot fizzles out quickly without any real provocations.
Clementine
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch in select virtual theaters.
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May 07, 2020 at 08:16PM
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‘Clementine’ Review: Lovers by the Lake - The New York Times
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