Many years ago I drove through part of the American desert: Death Valley in California, then Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas. Joshua Erkman’s first feature is called “A Desert” and the “A” signals that it isn’t about “the” desert, but “a” desert of the mind. It opens Friday, May 9 at the Roxy Cinema in Manhattan. Go here for show times and ticket information. Go here for show times in other cities.
Alex Clark (Kai Lennox) is a 40-ish photographer who published a book called “Death of the New West” some years earlier. The photos are reminiscent of the work of New Topographics photographers like Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz. (The director took the photos in the book over a three-year-period.) Alex hasn’t had much luck of late so he has set out alone to drive in the American Southwest with a large (8×10) format camera and capture new images, such as an abandoned movie theater.
Disturbed by the noise made by the couple in the next motel room (a scary/sexy Rob Zabrecky and Ashley Smith), he winds up sharing a mysterious alcohol beverage with the sketchy pair who claim to be siblings. This leads to him disappearing for a week, prompting Alex’s wife Sam (Sarah Lind), to hire private detective Howard (David Yow, who played the Homeless King in “Under the Silver Lake”) to investigate. Howard has something to hide in his past and when he visits the same motel room that Alex stayed in, you know he’s in for some wild and violent revelations.
The cast all are great in this well-directed neo-noir (or horror-noir) that employs both gorgeous location cinematography (think of the photographs Wim Wender took while shooting his “Paris, Texas”) and haunting nightime scenes and a few hypnotic collages (including a scene from the 1963 cult film “The Sadist”). Indie musician Ty Segall created the jazz songs that Alex listens to during his travels as well as the rest of the creepy soundtrack.
During one of my trips through the desert I saw a movie at a drive-in theater. A third of the screen had been ripped off by a twister earlier that year but they never fixed it and the people in the audience didn’t seem to mind! The drive-in featured in “A Desert” is curiously in mint condition, but seems to be used just as a flea market. In a flashback we see Alex and Sam in bed and Sam explains why she likes his photo of a movie screen: she can imagine whatever she likes on the screen. I’m not sure this film’s theme of projecting one’s hopes and fears onto rectangular canvases is fully realized but there are wonderful genre thrills along the way.
Director Erkman and actors Kai Lennox & Sarah Lind will do a Q&A at the 9:15 p.m. showing on Friday and the 9:45 p.m. showing on Saturday. Actor David Yow will do a Q&A at the 7 p.m. showings on May 13 and 14.