Uncovering Curiosities: Anthony Stabley’s EVERLASTING
One of the joys of Movies In Focus is that the site is able to shine a light on many films which might otherwise get overlooked. It’s always good to find small, quirky productions and offer them up to an audience that may have missed the opportunity to hear about them because of the loud buzz of the blockbuster marketing machine. That’s why it’s great to bring writer/director Anthony Stabley’s Everlasting to readers. Stabley’s 2015 film is a modern day Noir that sees budding filmmaker Matt (Adam David) documenting his journey to Los Angeles in an attempt to discover who murdered his girlfriend Jesse (Valentina de Angelis).
Everlasting plays with time and geography, switching from the past and present to give the film an off-kilter quality that plays like a memory half remembered from photographs and videos. It’s a film that very much focuses on how young people today live their lives through a vast majority of visual mediums. It’s almost as if this has replaced memory, that the human mind can no longer be trusted in a time of camera phones and ‘selfies’.
The 21st Century may be at the forefront of the story, but the backbone of Everlasting is the Noir genre. Voiceover, flashbacks and monologues litter Matt’s investigation into Jesse’s death and that delivers something different into the world of youth-centric features. There’s something about Joel Schumacher’s 8MM in Stabley’s film, as both tales focus on how the City Of Angels can corrupt and destroy the young and naive.
On a performance level Valentina de Angelis and Adam David both impress as the star crossed lovers who are never meant to be together. They play their roles as if they are fleeting shadows, flickering through their time on earth. This, aided by Jon Bickford’s cinematography and Scott Gordon and David Levita’s score, gives the film an eerie emptiness.
There’s much to be had within Everlasting’s brief running time. It’s small scale but it packs a lot into it’s modern Noir stylings. Seek it out.
