Unusual tension in ‘Lamb’ a little un-nerving
Published 5:50 pm Wednesday, January 20, 2016
An 11-year-old girl approaches a middle-aged man in a mini-mall parking lot. Dared by her friends, she asks him for a cigarette.
He dares her back: Get in his car, and they’ll prank her friends by driving away. That will teach them a lesson about approaching strange men in parking lots. So she does.
She is Tommie (Oona Laurence) and he is David (Ross Partridge). When she’s in his car, he scolds her. “I’m not a bad guy,” he says, “but I could have been.”
Thus begins an unlikely and uncomfortable relationship, as depicted in the indie film “Lamb” (adapted from a debut novel by Bonnie Nadzam, and produced by Seattle filmmaker Mel Eslyn). David, a kneejerk liar with serious issues, proposes that Tommie accompany him to a cabin on the prairie.
Tommie’s parents are too zonked-out on drugs to notice, so she agrees. This odyssey might be about him teaching her something, or perhaps the reverse.
Whatever it’s about tends to get lost in the film’s constant undercurrent of unpleasant suspense. Since a normal middle-aged man would not traipse off to a secluded cabin with a pre-adolescent girl, we have to worry about whether David is a pedophile.
The movie plays with this queasy tension as the road trip develops. In the dialogue and the performances, “Lamb” clearly wants to make a thoughtful exploration of two lost people, yet the intentions get waylaid by the sheer weirdness of the situation. (You could get away with this in a novel much more easily than with the flesh-and-blood figures in a movie.)
Leading man Ross Partridge (from “Baghead”) also adapted the screenplay and directed. He gives it his all, no doubt about it, and a kind of tortured sincerity bleeds out of every frame.
The film’s at its best with the excellent performance by Laurence — who’s clearly a child actress to be reckoned with — and in the locations. Shot in Wyoming, the movie’s desolate places are completely convincing, from the anonymous strip-mall to the wide-open spaces.
The highly-charged relationship at the center of “Lamb” is less convincing. There are people who will find the film’s situation a great conversation-starter. Although I salute its daring, I wasn’t one of them.
“Lamb” 2 stars
Rating: Not rated; probably R for subject matter
Showing: Sundance Cinemas.
