‘I’ll Show You Mine’ has only minimal effect [SIFF Review]
A well-crafted chamber work interested in fame, trauma and performative alliance, “I’ll show you mine”Works towards a well-deserved breakthrough for its audience and characters, but does not do much about it once it is secured. A true two-handed film by director Megan Griffiths emits theatrical vibes, which return to Samuel Beckett and even Edward Albee with its conversational backbone and philosophical foundation. This one has funny characters working through intriguing things, for sure, but neither the ultimate substance of the narrative nor the form in which it is presented marks it as particularly remarkable.
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“I’ll Show You Mine” opens with author Priya Sura (Poorna Jagannathancyberstalking former model and nephew-at-marriage, Nic (Casey Thomas Brown), prior to his awaiting arrival at her house. A glimpse into the panviral sensation about five years after his last sale date, Nic has agreed to sit down for a multi-day interview with Priya, who found her own low-level celebrity at about the same time as him when she published a memoir about her violent sheep. Nic’s party boy’s jokes and Priya’s failed follow-up book both hunger for a comeback, but when the couple starts talking, it becomes clear that this is less an interview and more a two-way mental siege.
While Priya explores Nic’s past in search of a gotcha moment to support her new book’s narrative backbone, she’s forced to dive deeper into her own trauma (to her great dismay). Priya’s publicly-turned author persona is an open book where her traumas and baggage are exhibited in all Hudson and Amazon tape ads, yet the two’s common stories allow Nic to find the seams and edges around this front. Their conversations and interactions over the course of two days and one evening allow both characters to alternate as interrogators and provide a meaningful arc for each individual.
It is interesting, often captivating and just raw enough to present with a tinge of legitimacy in a cinematic landscape that has explored familial trauma to death. And while Griffiths performs a wonderful breakthrough for her characters, she can’t quite find her ending: She leaves Priya and Nic to dangle a bit eventually. No spoilers, but it’s like a treasure hunt movie that ends immediately after the discovery of the coffin filled with gold coins. Getting the prize is great and all, but the real fun is figuring out what these characters should do once they reach that mountain top.
The format of this is also a bit strange, because as already mentioned, the whole production feels more appropriate for the stage, and a bit about the way it is presented seems to require a cinematic communication. Although Griffiths goes hand in hand in some of the more intense moments, nothing about “I’ll Show You Mine” feels enhanced or informed by the lighting, the score, or the cinematography. There are ways to use the cinema medium to enhance a piece like this, like how Mike Nichols played with depth of field to increase the tension in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?” or how Elia Kazan used a shrink set on “A tram called Desire”To reflect the claustrophobia of his characters. Although the script, Brown and Jagannathan do a great job of laying the groundwork for subtitles and character growth, the film and its great production never quite reach that level.
Which in no way makes this a bad movie, just a little incomplete and ill-suited to the screen. The wider piece is fast-paced, full of surprises and goes in several fascinating directions that connect more than a few intriguing dots, and for that it should be praised. Jagannathan is robust as the film’s emotional compass and skillfully carries some of the more subtle and nuanced moments written by Brown, which gets a lot more to do on the surface. A series of animated chapter shifts act as narrative guard rails throughout the image, and while their connection to an under-explored porn-cartoon subplot is a bit distracting, they are nonetheless a creative way to explore some of the story’s derived tangents.
A compelling, if anything, incomplete character study that gives his actors plenty to do, “I’ll Show You Mine” may not live up to its potential, but as Nic repeatedly points out, he and Priya do not either. If that was the point Griffiths and the movie kept trying to make; it was a well made one. [C+]