For the last few months, writer Robyn (Lisa Jarnot) has become a recluse, she
doesn't leave her New York appartment anymore and instead lets her "sister"
June (Jennifer Todd Reeves) do all the shopping for her. Maybe this has to do with a suicide attempt from years ago
which only made her lose her memory, maybe with her repressed memories of
abuse, maybe with all her romances that ended tragically, maybe with 9-11's
attack on the World Trade Center that somehow unhinged her or with George
W.Bush's war on terror that frightens her more than 9-11 ... However,
as hard as she tries, she can't shut out the outer world, be it the
neighbours talking she hears through her door, be it June visiting or
calling, be it neighbours stopping by for a drink or to complain, be it
the TV news about the war in Afghanistan and the attack on Iraq, or be it
spontaneous memories of her childhood coming back. In the end, the
realisation that she simply can't shut out the outer world drive Robyn out
of her appartment again ... On a story level, The Time we
Killed probably hasn't got all that much to offer, and the plot as
such is certainly slim for a feature film - but the movie succeeds in its
rather unique way of associative storytelling, contrasting scenes of Robyn inside her
appartment with shots from the outside, made up from shaky location shots,
home movies and found footage, usually presented in high contrast, and
therefore much more unreal than Robyn's little world that's her
appartment. Accordingly, much of the film's lines are not dialogue but an
off-screen patchwork of commentaries about pretty much everything by the
lead character, her poems, excerpts from her novel, and her memories, and
while all these seem to be thrown into the film at random, they do make
sense seen as a whole. That said, the film's not perfect, it's a tad too
long to be carried solely by its one storytelling technique - but it's a
fascinating watch all the same.
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