From the Calgary Underground Film Festival: I Blame Society is a 2020 dark comedy about a filmmaker trying to get work who dedicates herself to one killer job.
Gillian (Gillian Wallace Horvat) would make a great murderer. At least that’s what her friends say. Her real job though is a filmmaker, known since high school for her disturbing short films, but she’s not getting the attention she needs to get to the next step. Three years later, there’s an opportunity to shoot something in Israel but that falls through as well (a disinterested male manager dissing her without much care, the irony of only his ear visible while he hears nothing one of the cleverest bits), leading her to try something drastic, that of a documentary she started about how exactly she would actually become what her friends think she’d be good at. Meanwhile, when some producers express interest in working with her, she decides it’s the right time to take the plunge. And oh what dive she takes.
Written by Horvat and Chase Williamson, and directed by Hovart, I Blame Society is a sort of found footage-esque story with lots of handheld images and low-rent filming of people in conversations. However, that’s all on purpose, with Gillian on a slippery slope that tracks her wild ambitions on learning what it takes to be a killer, starting with petty theft and knot tying as she pushes the envelope in discovering a terrible truth about herself. Worse, she already knows who she wants to kill, a girl she calls “Stalin” (Alexia Rasmussen), the girlfriend of Gillian’s pal Chase (Williamson), but to get there, she needs some practice.
Hovart takes a raw approach to the subject matter, the film lacking nearly any production value in following a young woman who’s clearly gone round the bend even as those who know her don’t see it, including her boyfriend Keith (Keith Poulson), who eventually, slowly, realizes that nothing is healthy about their relationship, especially the sex (which becomes part of her experiment).
Hovart is careful to earn the title of her movie, Gillian experiencing some odd encounters that she uses to support her motivations, but also keeping it just absurd enough that the excuse feels rightfully loose. Gillian talks a lot, often to herself, or rather to her cameras, commenting on her actions with a kind of twisted detachment that she sees as a wall of innocence protecting her from the choices she makes. What’s smart about that is how subtle her breakdown is in spiraling her into madness, starting with a troubling moment on a hillside.
Hovart has directed and produced dozens and dozens of shorts, most of them documentaries, and that has certainly influenced her work here as she plays out Gillian’s murder documentary, framing and delivering this implosion with a carefully-structured sense of exploration. I like how Gillian comes to a realization about herself that she treats with a chilling sterility, one so long in the making, even her family and friends never saw its terrible potential.
I’ll admit that I was never truly convinced of the story’s authenticity, though I think Hovart is aiming for a sort of hyper-realism with a fable-esque edge. She’s clearly running commentary on society of course, and none of that is terribly fresh, but the stronger impression is that of commitment, unwaveringly built around the complexities and hurdles of completing a film as a woman, the insanity it takes to do so, and the sacrifices one makes in descending into a blind, hollow shell. That’s fun to watch, and surely, many in the industry will be able to draw parallels, even as it soaks that message in red by the end.
While I Blame Society runs a little out of steam in its third act, leading to its amusing and somewhat obvious end, Hovart’s fearless performance is one to remember, the filmmaker/actor clearly, rightfully, frustrated with what hoops she must pass through in getting her vision made. You can’t help but respect that.