A class reunion, 20 years after graduation: Everybody is in a good
mood, everybody wants to party, have a good time, quite a few people have
speeches there top remind everyone of the good time that never was ... and
then Anna, who seems to have felt out of place from the beginning, has her
speech, accusing the whole class of bullying her, of making her life hell
for 9 full years. At first, the others want to shut her up with empty
excuses, but the more concrete she gets in her accusations, the more
awkward the situation gets, and eventually, the whole thing gets physical,
Anna against the whole class that is, and ultimately, she's dragged out of
the room and sat in a cab ... But that was only a film by artist Anna
Odell, a sort of what if-narrative, in real life she was never invited to
the class reunion, and now she wants to know why, because she really has
been bullied all through high school - so she tracks her old schoolmates
down one after the other and shows them, or tries to show them the movie,
to capture their reactions and probably make peace with her past ... but
most of them are just full of empty excuses or try to be seen in a better
light ... The Reunion is, apparently, a film that falls
into two parts - and of the two of them the first is the better part by
far as it has a narrative arc, a storyline one can really identify with,
and is well-written, -played and -executed. The second part lacks the
urgency of the first one, rather shows a woman who can't let go of her
past. Sure, there are still a handful really good scenes in the movie, and
some characters are well-drawn, but after a time the thing gets
repetitive, the joke gets stale, and at times the film quite simply drags. Despite
this though, not at all a bad movie, and very entertaining not only
considering its dark subject - but definitely a film that falls short from
what it could have been.
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