The Pretenders is a 2019 drama about a love triangle involving a photographer, a director and an actress.
It’s 1979 and Terry (Jack Kilmer) meets an enchanting young woman named Catherine (Jane Levy) at a movie theater, but lets her go before getting her name and number. He also meets Phil (Shameik Moore), an ambitious photographer with a history of sleeping around, resisting personal relationships. Terry becomes obsessed with finding Catherine, and when they finally reconnect, convinces her to star in his short film based on his search and feelings for her, believing it an opportunity to get intimate. Unfortunately, Phil can’t tolerate that Terry might find happiness and commits to sabotage, and over the years, the three cross paths until Terry finally gets his big break, turning a story by Catherine into a screenplay where he meets Victoria (Juno Temple), hoping she will help him get over his past.
Directed by James Franco, The Pretenders is an arthouse student film in about every respect, with a very small budget and a minimalist approach filmed with hazy filters and a stage play feel. It’s awash in saturated neon colors, random nudity, plenty of clips of foreign movies, and a few modest efforts in giving it a period look. None of that is probably the point though, Franco, working from a script by Josh Boone, interested in the larger blunt force trauma of love, betrayal, loss and less. We don’t get any sense of personality from Terry, Phil or Catherine, only that one is tender and in love with cinema maybe more than romance and the other wielding sex like a hammer; she the pendulum between them.
Franco does find some flare in the presentation, purposefully taming the whole thing to look a bit amateurish, with most of it seemingly coming from a director who knows his influences and does what he can to emulate without duplicating. That means lots of blurry edges and deep shadows, roaming handhelds and intense lighting. However, the story is not without some hooks and there is some compulsion in seeing how point A gets to points B and C with some interest, despite a general lack of momentum.
It’s too bad because initially, the characters are engrossing, the setup prime and the setting authentic. But it’s awkwardly static and there is, by its end, no wonder in the journey of Terry and his endeavors, despite the hurdles right there in the story that offer plenty of potential. There are genuine efforts to make this feel heartbreaking, even deeply personal, but Franco keeps us distant, almost vouyeristic, which might be a design choice and even intentional in Boone’s screenplay, but it draws a clear boundary that has us leaning in to try and get a closer look without ever feeling close enough to make it matter.