REVELATION FILM FESTIVAL: A Christmas-time odyssey of grief and rebirth, writer-director Zach Clark’s White Reindeer firmly establishes the Virginian native as one of the most fascinating and confronting filmmakers working in independent cinema.
A unique and captivating take on one woman’s life-altering December.
After exploring the highs and lows of debauchery in his previous works Rock & Roll Eulogy, Modern Love is Automatic and Vacation!, Clark finds a more subtle aesthetic though no less shattering voice for this suburban yuletide psycho-drama. His take on the dark heart of mid-west America recalls David Lynch (specifically Blue Velvet, though this more is playful), with his eye for capturing the minutiae of fake, middle-class morality is reminiscent of Douglas Sirk. Fassbinder and Solondz are other names that have been bandied about in an effort to define Clark’s idiosyncratic talent. Regardless of his influences, his fourth film is a unique and captivating take on one woman’s life-altering December and those who share her journey.
Suzanne Harrington (Anna Margaret Hollyman) has created for herself a pristine façade of white-picket beauty. A successful realtor by day, she is married to Virginia’s number one TV weatherman, Jeff (Nathan Williams), a career meteorologist who has just scored the dream job – Hawaii. In the film’s first 15 minutes, Clark establishes a slightly off-kilter dynamic between the married couple that taunts his audience. Suzanne adores a traditional white Christmas, yet accepts Jeff’s relocation to tropical climes (suggesting he doesn’t really know her at all) with unusual eagerness; their puritanical niceness does not extend to rough kitchen sex, with Jeff crudely dirty-talking Suzanne.
The film changes course shockingly when Suzanne’s world is rocked by a terrible incident and she is soon facing a festive season alone in their home, the memories and reminders of a life she will now never know everywhere. As grief takes hold, she begins to discover aspects of Jeff’s life she was not privy too. A friend’s teary confession as to the secret sordid details of her late husband’s life leads to Suzanne discovering Jeff’s predilection for online pornography, a revelation that leads to a downtown strip club. Here, she meets Fantasia (Laura Lemar-Goldsborough), a beautiful, struggling single mother who shared a deep affection for Jeff.
There are several moments when Clark’s narrative could have spun off into melodramatic histrionics, but he has a far greater respect and purpose for his lead character. Hollyman, whose bold, brave performance features in almost every frame of the film, strips Suzanne of her pretensions and takes her on a drugs- and sex-fuelled search for feeling and meaning. Her burgeoning friendship with Fantasia and a reassessing of all her base beliefs ensures Suzanne’s arc, in the hands of an insightful and caring filmmaker, is a deeply moving one. All of which may suggest this journey of redemption is a very dour slog, which could not be further from the truth. Clark, like contemporaries Todd Solondz, Todd Haynes and Lisa Cholodenko, finds deliriously dark humour in the most awkward of encounters. Hollyman’s expression is priceless when, in the depth’s of Suzanne’s most despairing moments, her ageing parents tell her they are divorcing. The final frames of White Reindeer are utterly uplifting, though in a sly, subversive way – words one does not usually associate with a Christmas film.
But a Christmas film it most certainly is, and one filled with warmth which belies its dark themes and frank scenes. Zach Clark’s dissection of the tawdry iconography and meaningless accoutrements of the festive season is razor-sharp, but it is all in the service of revealing a truer, deeper understanding of Suzanne, in particular, and the spirit of Christmas in general.
