Low Low is a 2019 drama about four high-school girls who confront sex, violence and their uncertain future as they struggle to reconcile a rebellious youth with impending adulthood.
No matter what your opinion is at the end of writer and director Nick Richey‘s debut feature film Low Low, there will be no stripping away the impact of how well these mostly unknown actors pull together in delivering deeply authentic performances. Richey is out to give the saturated coming-of-age genre a gritty edge and mostly succeeds, his style one that seems purposefully absent of style, instead getting right in the faces of a reality that presses heavy on four high school girls at a pivotal point in their lives.
Ryan (Ali Richey) and her best friends Cherry (Montana Roesch), Lana (Kacie Rogers), and Willy (Alexis Raich) live up in Washington state, the girls each dealing with an uncertain future as their everyday lives blunt them with obstacles. Ryan is front and center, a bright student with what it takes to get into college, a hopeful teacher (Moniqua Plante) working to get her enrolled. Ryan’s resistant though, her alcoholic mother Sylvia (Elaine Hendrix) and her dead end men holding her back. Meanwhile, Lana harbors some unspoken feelings, acting as protector. Cherry wants to be an engineer, considering leaving her boyfriend Memo (Adam Elshar), and Willy is having unprotected sex with Cory (Tyler Chase), much to his girlfriend Tanya’s (Savannah Stehlin) fury, putting Ryan in defense of her friend, which leads to some serious consequences.
Richey builds tension with some genuine snap as we fall right into the heat of a turbulent night of partying on the night before the last day of school. We aren’t given exposition, instead dropped right into the fray as we meet these girls and play catch up to their plights. It’s the right choice, with Ryan from the start setting the tone with a short, up close description of what it was like the first time she saw a naked man. She was six. This sets the proverbial ball rolling as things ramp up, leading to a chaotic moment when Rayn vents her frustration in violence.
All of this is good stuff. It’s powerful, on point, and richly authentic, these four girls fearless and yet terrified, convincing as young women in various states of plausible need. However, after the midpoint, the story begins to lose traction, slipping on its own weight as it works to keep stuffing the bag fuller than it already its, not always landing with the hard hitting power it starts with, despite some very earnest work from the cast.
And that’s where this all must circle back to. While Richey’s script might deflate the further it progresses, his cast makes his effort far more significant, with each of the four main leads finding just the right space to wring some truth out of their stories, especially so for Ali Richey, who fills Ryan with such pain, it’s hard to watch. Her scenes with Hendrix, particularly in the first half, are arresting, the film subverting all the tropes of just that. Low Low doesn’t always complete well what it begins, and can’t find the emotional booms it feels primed to deliver, but is a smart start for the first time director and deserves a look. Recommended.