Beth (Sarah Booth) works the overnight alone, cleaning the career center at the local college. She’s stressed because someone she cares about has not come home and she’s waiting word, even looking for someone else to cover her shift. Scott (Daved Wilkins) trudges home from a night at the bar, wallowing in a sorrow that has him at a crucial lowpoint. He calls a number he’s seen on a bus believing it a suicide prevention line, searching for hope and reaches Beth, she wholly unprepared for what she gets, though a connection soon forms that will change them both.
I hesitate to say gimmick in describing what’s next, but director and co-writer with Wilkins, Gavin Michael Booth‘s approach to Last Call is half the appeal, using split-screen for the duration with both sides a single unbroken shot running parallel the entire length of the movie. It shifts from top to bottom to side by side seamlessly and is so structured that the presentation of it slips into the un-noticeable as the story and dialogue effortlessly take their place.
As the two engage in a slowly revealing conversation, the tone and emotional sways between them becomes increasingly compelling, with a kind of voyeuristic angle on our end as we follow them through their ordeal, Beth as she at first tries to keep cleaning with a Bluetooth headset and Scott as he lumbers about his dark apartment. She soon uses the internet to try and get help in keeping him on the line while he finds in her a person who actually listens. What she hears … well, this is not an easy story.
There’s an obvious almost traumatic weight to all this with the darkness of regret and tragedy crushing the space between them as they share their pain. And for us, additional stress of seeing what they are doing, some of which has tremendous impact. That’s surprisingly effective in keeping us connected, making us want to reach out in this call and tell the other what is happening.
A thing like this has only the power it does not because of how it’s presented, though that certainly does its thing right, but because how deeply authentic these performances are. When Beth shakily says, “I don’t know what to do,” Booth gives it such a heartbreaking punch, it sucks the air out of your lungs. Make no mistake, Last Call is not playing with kid gloves here. This feels about as real as anything I’ve seen in the movies for a long time.
The remarkable thing about this small film is how you instantly find yourself jumping on a bandwagon of sorts, thinking that the split screen one-take bit will distract you from the story, almost immediately hoping it will go away. And then, a few minutes later, thanks to a monumental effort of timing, script management, and perfectly choreographed performances, there falls upon this movie a delicate fluidity that mixes itself into a wonderfully thoughtful experience, even as harrowing as it becomes. It’s not expected. And that, right there, is a rare thing in movies.