BRISBANE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: Comically expanding on the notion that the strangest thing in the universe is actually the inarticulate needs of the heart, Lisa Olnek’s Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same proves to be an amusing, if occasionally intermittent, mash-up of the quirky American indie romance and a 1950s sci-fi B-movie. Complete with a Theremin squeal for the lurid theme music, the low-budget release suggests that instead of the usual alien invasion motivations such as food or slaves, that they’re actually here for our advanced dating mechanisms.
On the Planet Zots, where the humanoids are tall, expressionless and without hair – think of the old Saturday Night Live routine and feature spin-off Coneheads – the ozone layer is being depleted by the ferocious expansion of loving emotions. The Zotsian solution is to send their transgressors to Earth: 'There you can get your heart broken so that you cannot love anymore," a counselor tells Zoinx (Susan Ziegler), who soon find herself in Brooklyn, where chrome domes and uniforms purchased from a Star Trek garage sale barely disturb the local’s narcissism.
With deliberately clumsy production design – yes, that’s a cardboard flying saucer on string; somewhere Ed Wood sighs happily – Codependent pokes fun at the travails of modern American dating. Zoinx and her fellow females, the promiscuous Zylar (Jackie Monahan) and the gentle Barr (Cynthia Kaplan), are drawn to women, and in set-up after set-up hopeful partners evaluate them and a few decide that, all things considered, gills, no social graces and a voice like grinding gears is not such a bad catch.
Alternating between tightly framed and edited conversations and two shots, with a black and white visual scheme that allows a glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge to give you Woody Allen nostalgia, Zoinx finds a relationship with Jane (Lisa Haas), a sadsack working in a stationary store who gradually comes out her shell under the stern but non-judgmental gaze of the towering alien. For the film’s drily comic tone to be affecting you have to actually buy Jane’s timid excitement, and Haas has a gentle emotional momentum that makes you believe that she wouldn’t question the arrival of love no matter how unexpected a shape it takes.
Olnek, a playwright writing and directing her first feature, intersperses these adventures with the ruminative conversations of two government agents who, unlike the Men in Black, just sit in the car and disagree about wedding themes and sweets ('I’m uncomfortable with Boston cream donuts," confesses one to the other, in a typical gambit) while the narrative outside mixes up cultural queries and fish out of water gags. Yes, Zoinx dances with Jane in public, and yes, her Zotsian moves are unexpected.
Seeing these riffs coming doesn’t unduly lessen their simple pleasure, although the movie’s quietly observational tone could have done with the occasional upbeat interlude; the closest it gets is the shark-like Zylar wandering the streets, dispensing curtly honest observations to a string of girlfriends by mobile phone, such as admitting to lying to one because she thought they wouldn’t be together long enough for her to be caught out.
A few more staples of either genre, whether it’s meeting the family or a strange ritual, might have filled in a few more blanks and eased the hermetic feeling, but nonetheless at a brisk 76 minutes Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same is worth meeting.
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