Footprints

TedFlicks Rating:

$10.50 ticket on a scale of $0 to $13.50

ETHERIALLY YOURS

“Footprints,” the second feature directed by Steven Peros, who also gets writer and producer credits, is an admirably brief (80 minute) mystery/comedy that goes into limited release in the US on 15 April, just in time to take people’s minds off their income taxes.  With no big names attached to it, “Footprints” is unlikely to gain wide theatrical release, but it could get a following in home video or on cable TV.  While it is not off-the-wall enough to become a cult classic, “Footprints” is not by any means a bad picture.

The occult mystery is written, directed, and acted with sufficient wit and charm to amuse just about anybody but a Scientologist — it pokes gentle fun at the religion of Tom Cruise — as well as at Hollywood, kitsch, America’s obsession with celebrity, and film buffs — all of which probably deserve it, your critic included.

That it languished in the vaults of Hollywood for two years (it was finished in 2009) before getting even limited theatrical release is more of a comment on the movie business than it is on this picture.  But for the film buff, it offers a great many nice touches.

Skein commences with an amnesiac young woman, (Our Girl played by Sybil Temtchine) awakening at dawn on the concrete footprints of movie stars outside Graumman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in the present day.  Action takes place in one day from dawn to dusk in an area of a few blocks.  A monologue, voiced off screen by H.M. Wynant, sort of sets the stage, but it is deliberately open to interpretation — as is much of pic.

Our Girl’s first encounter, before she knows whether she is awake or dreaming, is with a homeless man (Jeris Poindexter) who offers her a lecture on racism in the placement of the famous concrete slabs.  Next come a pair of kindly Hollywood tourguides, Charley Rossman and John Brickner as Mike and the E-Man, who function as a sort of cinematically literate Abbot and Costello.  Perhaps their most amusing interaction with Our Girl is how they talk about her as if she were not there, seated across from them in a diner, and instead get caught up in their own reality.  Just such a moment — an argument of the usage of “myriad” (adjective or noun) — gives an opening to a distinguished older gentleman (Victor, played by Wynant) to make his entry.  A man with seemingly endless time on his hands, Victor is entrusted with the care of Our Girl.  In order to jar her memory, he takes her on a walk around Hollywood, asks questions about movies she has seen, her job, etc.  These yield one memory:  She knows she is from Hollywood.  Another clue keeps popping up.  Every time she looks skyward, she utters the phrase, “Fountain Boy.”

Victor disappears after excusing himself to the restroom but not before scribbling his name and number on a card — the business card of a Hollywood memorabilia shop.  Enter Catherine Bruhier as Cat Woman — the sort of action figure knockoff whom tourists pay to appear in their photos.  Our Girl is a natural to be Wonder Woman, she says, coaxing her into an outfit whose top she does not quite fill out.  Cat Woman was right.  Our Girl collars tourists by the dozens and rakes in a wad of cash.  At this point, in another Hollywood-insider touch, enter Supergirl, played by the infamous Riley Weston, center of the 1999 “Felicity” age scandal.  Weston shows her chops as the utterly obnoxious, motor-mouth who puts people off.

Day’s end finds the trio relaxing at a sidewalk café.  Across the street, a Scientologist offers free “stress tests.”  Our Girl, pic’s most stressed player, takes one.  Suddenly, the genial Scientologists turns into her recurring vision of a sinister man (Kirk Bovill) in a raincoat with heavily lidded blue eyes.  Terrified, Our Girl runs to her friends at the café, but they have disappeared.  At this point, auds should be getting the idea that pic has crossed through the looking glass into the paranormal.  It’s not just a story about a girl with amnesia and the intersection of dreams and reality — or maybe it is depending on one’s point of view.  Part of pic’s attraction is its deliberate lack of clarity.  Auds get to decide for themselves what really happens.  Thanks to sharp dialogue, the charm of the cast, and its fast pace, pic gets by whatever one’s take on it is.  Otherwise, lack of clarity is almost always deadly to a movie.

From this point forward pic’s revelations unfold with speed.  Our Girl finds herself at Graumman’s Egyptian Theater across Hollywood Boulevard from the Chinese.  “I remember this place,” she says.  There she encounters an elegant older woman (Genevieve Kent, played by Pippa Scott) whom some filmgoers will remember as Pegeen Ryan from 1958’s “Auntie Mame.”  She is perhaps pic’s most generous character so far as Our Girl is concerned.  If Victor is one side of the Rosetta Stone of her life, Genevieve is the other.  There are a few more clues, some having to do with Hollywood history and others to do with local real estate, but suffice it to say that Genevieve (who turns out to be the star of a cult favorite “B” movie of 1957) reveals the secret of the sinister man, and prompts pic’s denouement, wherein unfolds the significance of “Fountain Boy.”To your critic, “Footprints” is a ghost story told with a very light touch.  It’s not wrapped up as neatly as the 1944 classic, “The Uninvited,” but that in no way diminishes its attraction.

Tech credits are above par.  Editing by Travis Rust excels.  Sound recording is good.  Pic carries no rating, but your critic suspects that it would be PG-13 due to a little bad language.  There is no sex.  Even the kids might like Cat Woman, Wonder Woman, Supergirl.

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