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FROWNLAND
Edited, Written & Directed by Ronald Bronstein
Produced by Marc Raybin
Director of Photography, Sean Price Williams
Music by Paul Grimstad
Released by Frowland, Inc.
USA. 106 min. Not Rated
With Dore Mann, Paul Grimstad, David Sandholm, Carmine Marino, Paul Grant & Mary Wall

Everything that Woody Allen did to glamorize neurosis in New York, Frownland obliterates in one fell, tormented swoop. First-time director Ronald Bronstein burrows his darkly curious camera into the life of Keith Sontag (Dore Mann) – a self-proclaimed “troll under the bridge,” whose social awkwardness is all debilitating pathology and no part endearing quirk. A petri dish of personality disorders, Keith quarantines himself in the kitchen-turned-bedroom of a grim outer borough apartment, emerging only to struggle through his job as a door-to-door coupon salesman in the suburbs.

Like pores under a magnifying glass, everything ugly and unsavory is exaggerated through Bronstein’s unflinching lens. He presents New York as a city entirely comprised of losers, loners, and rejects, with hardly one normal, well-adjusted soul in sight. Keith’s only friend, Laura (Mary Wall), is a suicidal outcast, whose silence throughout most of the film suggests the unlikelihood of her emotional salvation. His other “acquaintances,” most of whom desperately try to avoid his company, are best described as the perfect cast for a game of Saturday Night Live’s “Geek, Dweeb, or Spaz?” There’s Keith’s roommate Charles (Paul Grimstad), who plays the electric keyboard and communicates everything with a hyper-intellectual torrent of words; and Sandy (David Sandholm), who dons starched white shirts to watch grainy old movies on his VCR and primps his meticulous little apartment. Unlike Keith, the personality hiccups of his lame entourage aren’t disturbing enough to stifle a hearty laugh from the audience – a respite from the otherwise uncomfortable experience of watching Frownland.

Following the purest traditions of American independent cinema, Bronstein is utterly unapologetic for this discomfort. Perhaps he inflicts it on us so we can repent for identifying with Keith's tormenters. While we’ve learned to love the superficially awkward (that guy who wears big glasses but still gets the girl) and understand the certifiably crazy (exempted from fault by a medical diagnosis), the poor chump whose neuroses simply make him unlikable is allowed no excuses. While watching Keith’s twitchy movements and hearing his servile mumblings (painfully well acted), even an audience so intimately familiar with his illnesses wants him to somehow just snap out of it and be normal. And therein lies the film’s success – it forces us to come to terms with Keith’s pitiful fate as much as with our own impatience. Yana Litovsky
March 6, 2008