Zoom (2015) Reviews

• Art Influencing Life Influencing Art

  clarkj-565-1613362015-09-18

  Just saw this at TIFF several nights ago. It was a welcome change as the movies I had seen up to that point were excellent, but very heavy. In math there is this concept of a complex number consisting of a real part and an imaginary part. Many things in nature cannot be modelled by a real number alone, but need complex numbers. So the analogy in life is that we have our imaginary life and visions and these in turn influence are real lives which in turn generate more visions etc. They both exist together and not separately. The movie is a mixture of film and animation and it works very well. Emma draws a character who directs a movie who's actor is writing a novel. They all interact and involve each other. Very amusing, nice mixture of Canadian and Brazilian humour.

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• Great start, and then it sort of drifts downhill...

  A_Different_Drummer2016-09-09

  As a "prolific" reviewer, I have found over the years that many IMDb members do not use these reviews to check out a film before watching, they prefer to see the film first and then up-rate the reviews that "agree" with their Pov, and down-rate those that don't. So, as a courtesy to those who have not seen this film, I suggest that rabid fans of this production who have already seen it, and are looking for validation, just stop right here. That said, I didn't just like the first half-hour of this film, I loved it. Any movie that begins with the massively-talented and criminally under-utilized Alison Pill is automatically ahead on points. (She can do things with her eyes and glasses that many actresses cannot even do with dialog.) The fact that the setting for the opening scenes is a shop that makes sex dolls also was an interesting hook. I have seen a lot of movies -- arguably, too many -- but had never seen that trope before. Clever! As the story progresses, and Pill's character -- who makes sex dolls are a living -- is driven by a co-worker's callous comment to seek bigger breasts, well, again, clever and interesting and quirky as Hell. So far, so good. However, after a great beginning, the script takes a sharp segue into that whole "life imitating art imitating life" thing and, to be frank, which is the reviewer's job, none of that added to the power of the film, it only detracted. To some extent, this reminded me of the classic 1976 Allegro Non Troppo (recommended if you can find a copy!!) where once again the story tries to define the thin line between reality and non-reality. However in Allegro, there was a constant upbeat sense of joy and wonder to the film, which gave it power. In Zoom, all the cross-arcs -- the egoistical film director, the supermodel who simply wants to be respected as a writer -- actually remove power from the impact of the production. By the end of the story, when Pill's character suddenly finds herself in the middle of a "drug deal gone bad," I had to conclude this was a classic example of a good film which -- HAD THE SCRIPT SEEN ANOTHER FEW REWRITES -- could have been really great.

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• Lovely movie with a very interesting premise

  siderite2017-06-25

  If you're wondering how is it possible that this movie is so good and yet you have missed it, the reason is two-fold. One, it's a Canadian movie. Second, it is smarter than it is commercial, something that, ironically, is being touched on in the film. The idea is quite fresh: this Brazilian model is writing a book about a girl that works in a sex doll factory and who is writing a comic about the man of her dreams who is a famous director directing the movie in which the lead character is the Brazilian model. The whole plot is a metaphor on the toxic loop in which we live our lives. The individual stories were interesting enough, each touching on human vanity. Motifs like the role of the woman in society, our obsession with looking different from what we are, whether it is about the size of tits or penis or whether we are perfectly attractive and resent being seen as sex objects, and how the things we do in life come back to haunt us are everywhere. I did like the film a lot because it was self referential while zooming in on the viewer and their own effect on themselves and everybody else. I recommend it highly.

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• A completely unique trip

  VinnieRattolle2016-10-01

  Spoiler-light. An artist draws a comic book about a film director; the director makes a movie about a novelist; the novelist writes a book about the artist. The movie shifts back and forth between the three stories, with none of the characters aware that they're directly affecting someone else's life. The artist (Alison Pill) works in a factory assembling sex dolls, which only strengthens her desire to have larger breasts. The director (Gael García Bernal) finds himself at odds with producers... and his own body. The novelist (Mariana Ximenes) dumps her boyfriend and gives up her modeling career to pursue her dream of writing. If you can wrap your brain around the strange narrative (and don't mind the sight of bare breasts, which the actual director seemed rather preoccupied with), this movie's thoroughly entertaining. Without question, the standout segment is the artist's, which kicks off the film and forms the backbone. The movie hangs firmly on Allison Pill's shoulders, and she exudes a lovable charm which engages you as her situation goes from kind of odd to downright bizarre. The director's segment ranks a distant second, but the entire thing is rotoscoped (filmed and then animated) which gives it a surreal beauty. The weakest link is the novelist's portion, though it certainly isn't the fault of any of the actors - the problem is that this third vignette is entirely devoid of the overt humor which pervades the other two stories. It's sort of a shame that there IS a weak link here, because this film is completely unique and has so much going for it. It's not perfect but it's one of those movies where it feels like everyone involved was pouring their heart into it, so the result is kinda magical. The performances are excellent across the board, the animation has a wonderful hand-drawn feel to it, the cinematography is exquisite, the music perfectly accompanies the visuals, it's well-paced and feels like a much bigger-budget film than it actually is. And then there's that ending. I literally had a big, dumb grin on my face all throughout the climax... though I recognize that what so greatly amused me could easily be off-putting to others. The bottom line is that if you're the type who prefers offbeat indies to cookie-cutter Hollywood crapfests, there's a good chance that you'll love Zoom.

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• Very interesting stories making one big story.

  subxerogravity2016-09-06

  Even though only a section of the film is animated using rotoscope, the whole movie has an indi comic feel, like Love and Rockets of Ghost World (which was made into a film) The animation looks like it's the same as A Scanner Darkly, possible done by the same animation team, but in A Scanner Darkly it seems like the animation was a bigger arch. It's an interesting circle about three people. Emma who works at a Factory that makes sex dolls, draws pictures of herself being a beautiful busty femme fatale, an image that the guy she's sleeping with finds absurd. In retaliation, she draws her dream guy, Eddie, a hot Spanish action film director who's doing a film he plans to use to take himself serious, but comes across a little problem when Emma, unhappy with her new boobs decides to get rid of the "package" that made him a hot commodity in Hollywood, and effects the making of his film about Michelle, a Brazilian model tired of being judge on her looks, who goes home to write a novel that just so happens to be about Emma. It's a nicely layered story and becomes very surrealistic, as all three story tellers take us through their creative process, and if anyone knows anything about the creative process, the story goes through constant changes which switches the tone in order to make the story work. It's a very unformulated movie that goes from the tame to the outrageous, and keeps me captivated with some very interesting personas moving on the screen. cinemagardens.com

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