Parallax is a 2020 thriller about a young artist who wakes up in a life that she doesn’t recognize.
Most of us at some point surely get a feeling like maybe we’re out of place, like all of this is part of a strange dream that we can’t wake up from. For a young woman named Naomi (Naomi Prentice), that feeling is persistent, that nothing about who she is and where lives is real. Instead, she finds herself haunted by visions of suspension in a deep, water-filled black void as her fiancé Lucas (Nelson Ritthaler) tries to understand what is happening and why the woman he loves is steadily slipping away. But what if there is truth behind her sense of misplacement and the that world she is in and the world where she comes from are not the same?
Written and directed by Michael Bachochin, Parallax is a perplexing twist of science fiction and human drama. It’s no accident that Naomi is an artist by trade, a painter who finds a physical connection between the oil on her canvas and herself, transported to places born of her imagination. But is it real? That’s not important at first, as the story puts a lot of focus on Lucas, who seeks help from a therapist (Ted Gianopulos) in dealing with Naomi, trying to find an explanation for why she doesn’t seem to be present anymore. And why she doesn’t even know who he is.
Naomi talks to us in narration throughout, commenting on her situation as if she’s hovering above trying express her feelings while she falls further into the unknown. She fades in and out of conversations, understanding that she is clearly detached but unsure what it means. “I am fear. I am panic. I am delusion,” she says, and we feel that pressing on her as words like ‘dementia’ and ‘Alzheimer’s’ enter the picture, but it becomes much more complicated than that. All she knows is that the tree in the backyard makes her feel real and the darkness is closing in.
Then there is the room in the house Lucas won’t let her see, and that she has been hospitalized for this before. Are we to believe what we see her do or do we trust that Lucas is as wounded by this as he seems. This is the crux of Bachochin’s story, one that works hard to keep Naomi ambiguous, with disorienting compositional shots that stretch the rule of thirds to such a degree that characters are nearly lost in the corners, as if being pushed out of their own story. There are times when all we see are eyes popping up at the bottom of the screen as if they are trying to get into the picture.
And this is where I must stop, as to say more would be an injustice to where this goes. Instead, I will say that Parallax has a number of unexpected cards up its sleeve, taking its time to lay them on the table. It’s smart enough to let you read them as you wish, though Bachochin isn’t playing any game you’re used to so you’re left unsure if you can trust anything you see. I like that, where a filmmaker looks to take us on a journey riddled with detours.
This is a very small project, one wisely weighted by its dialogue rather than superfluous visual effects to try and fool us into something it’s not. It is heavy science fiction brilliantly disguised as an existential headtrip that builds to a labyrinth of questions that takes some effort to understand. That will surely keep some at bay, but this is a movie carefully crafted for fans of a specific genre, uninterested in exposition and straight lines. That goes a long way in earning Parallax its cryptic and troubling end where anything goes. Highly recommended.