Barefoot (Andrew Fleming, 2014): USA

Reviewed by Jacob Wirsenius. Viewed at the Metropolitan 4, Santa Barbara.

Barefoot is probably the best movie I saw during the festival. Its a romantic comedy and it’s, as always about a guy and a girl, falling in love. I usually don’t like romantic comedies but this one had a fun twist to it with great acting. Most of the time these movies are predictable but this one gave me some surprises.

I went and saw this movie at Metro 4 in Santa Barbara, it is directed by Andrew Fleming and the three most important actors are Evan Rachel Woods who plays the girl, Scott Speedman who plays the guy and J.K Simmons who plays the Doctor. J.K Simmons is well known from the older Spider-Man movies as J.J, the newspaper guy.

So it’s about this guy named Jay who works as a janitor at a mental hospital. Jay comes from a rich family but doesn’t go along well with his father so they have a complicated relationship. The girl named Daisy is taken in at this mental hospital because her mother has died and they suspect the girl to be the killer. Jay’s brother is having a wedding coming up and Jay doesn’t want to come to the wedding alone so he end up taking Daisy with her. Daisy was homeschooled so she doesn’t have the social skills so strange situations happens along the road and especially at the wedding where she  ends up getting a panic-attack. Jay and Daisy leaves the wedding and the love keeps getting stronger between them.

I was impressed by the acting from Evan Rachel Woods playing a crazy girl because I often feel that it’s always excessive but she managed to keep it on a good level and was believable in her acting. You could also see her character growing during the film, from the start being a totally lost girl and with few words to a loveably person with great humor which was interesting to follow. The music was fitted to work with every scene and made me feel they way I was suppose to and it could give me a good feeling and suddenly turn to a bad feeling. This is common in these kinds of films and really worked. The editing was very normal for a romantic comedy and didn’t really stand out. When looking at the camerawork of this movie I noticed the repeating use of panning, for example every time they were on the road with their van a panning shot was used to show the car driving on the road. That was one thing I feel they could have skipped doing all the time to make it more interesting.

The movie really is a typical romantic comedy but I think it stands out because of the different plot and that it could surprise me with choices the character did I couldn’t see coming. If you like romantic comedies you should for sure see this one because it got everything a good film needs with acting, music and story,