Desert Road

Desert Road: In the event that you have traversed the large stretches of the Californian desert, you’d understand how the feeling is a unique blend of terror and curiosity. You are also likely to be aware that a board with a warning stating “Next service 72 miles” such as the one shown at the beginning of the Desert Road, is one that should not be taken lightly. A lone traveller, though in a thrilling psychological twist by Shannon Triplett should not be termed as careless or foolish, but one bad call turned a simple fuel stop into a surreal and very much real brainfreeze that she simply wants to get away from.

The twenty-something character in the carefully crafted mystery is played by Kristine Froseth (The Buccaneers, Sharp Stick). She captures a fascinating search filled with naiveté and energy, both in the physical aspect (so much of running with meaning!). Kristine Froseth is mysterious in that she crashed her car into a trivial but adamant boulder in the Mojave Desert and was stuck in an annoying spiral of temporary solutions and repeat performances. At that point, her character, who is called Jane and introduced only late in the film as an alluring pun, had both bright and the sinister shades. On that roundabout journey, she meets some of the most unforgettable characters played beautifully by Frances Fisher, a downcast Beau Bridges, and a magically elusive Ryan Hurst.

The protagonist asks her mother (Rachel Dratch) over the phone whether she feels “stuck in a loop.” This is about her aspirations to become a photographer, which seem to be going nowhere. Their conversation occurs when the Woman, as she is listed in the credits, is having her car towed. She is returning to Iowa from Los Angeles, where her sedan now contains all her belongings. In a wise and loving voice, her mother tells her not to lose hope. Bucking the trend of demoralising cinematic maternal figures, Rach makes a fine mother. The daughter hears the mother’s plan too, and all she can say in response is, “Impossible! We are rotters and it’s over.” Nobody’s winning and the car refuses to move. Hi, inflection point.

The desert’s harshness began after a stop for gasoline, though in a stunning setting. Triplett, a visual effects artist before her first production as a director, and the director of photography, Nico Navia, grasp that the Mojave needs no embellishment; they render its horizontal expanse and changing light in an elegantly robust way – and the landscape is full of bleakness and potential. In the writer’s script to the film only locations in Death Valley are mentioned, but the film also has as background images on the southern part, not far from Amboy, which are very eerie even if you never been to this southern California area – and especially for those who did.

A trip down memory lane would not be complete without pausing for a moment at the outsize and crumbling advertisement for some ancient roadside restaurant whose days came and went within the time frame of when Route 66 was in its prime before an Interstate came to life and eclipsed the highway. On the remote fuel station where she pauses to fill her tank, The Woman encounters one of the most peculiar and frightened clerks, vainly played by Max Mattern. It’s just soon after their exchange when she, within the split second of looking at her cellphone, engages in an unfortunate showdown with a piece of stone situated by the road, and starts to wait for Steve (Hurst) who, as it appears, is the only tow truck driver in this area. Steve claims that he cannot get there for several hours, but he also wants to receive payment first and by telephone.

To which you might think, the seasoned driver might think ‘What, no Triple-A?’ But all in all, the reality check is appropriate. The spell, if ever a more befitting word could be used, cast by the story of Triplett is too strong for the possible holes in the logic to even make a dent do not weaken the spell at all. (Nor does the oddity where the Woman and everyone else in the movie refers to the road over which the action takes place as CA-190, rather than just 190 or, in Socal style, ‘the 190’. Unless this is some sort of riddle that I didn’t get, it is a seldom heard false note in the otherwise efficiently edited dialogue that is free of any unnecessary embellishments or effects and gets to the point.)

Pumping heart of drama is also present in the action as the editing and sound design matches that of Froseth’s character who is not only trapped in an existential loop but a geographical one as well: Time and again, no matter where she seems to walk or which direction she walks in, the same endless two-lane straight road, she always finds herself at her battered vehicle. Believing that she is about to go insane, she begins to take notes and make sketches in order to decipher what is going on as she travels back and forth between three points — the petrol station, her automobile and a long wires encased factory.

Each time she stops in the station, its attendant treats her in a more odd fashion than the previous time. This is complemented by a belligerent driver, Edwin Garcia II, with a factory security officer, D.B. Woodside, who offers nothing in terms of assistance.

Having watched many lone movie drivers before her, The Woman has found herself in a peculiar sort of limbo, and the noir thrum that writer-director Triplett musters (with perfecty muted accents of designers Matt Rumer and Nadine Sondej-Robinson) is almost dreamlike. To this there is mercy as well. In the midst of the implausible elevations and the sensation of an anxiety-induced free fall, there is something that is important and persistent, seeking to surface in as much as flirting a little with Anna Drubich’s low-key score at certain points, or in the case of the outstanding performance of “Jump Into The Fire” by Harry Nilsson.

Explanations, if they ever come for such melting within the ice encapsulating the narrative, can be seen as the death of the drama or at the very least seeing as a great anticlimax in Desert Road. Here, however, Triplett’s overlay of spacetime, or Schroedinger’s box, if you will, not only manages its flow in a captivating fashion but it also manages to combine unexpected emotional beats in the quick, sharp cuts by Fisher, Bridges and Hurst. (The first two play characters best left undefined here in the interest of discovery and surprise.)

Froseth has an almost hypnotic presence that draws you in through every step as she takes part as the core of this folding and unfolding origami of unreality that is set in a harsh environment with little circumstances for its focus to be anything but the reexamination of events from various perspectives.

Desert Road will certainly require watching again in order to notice its hints and unravel its logic. More than that, looking back on its very narrow sub-genre, this erudite crossroads or Memento and It’s a Wonderful Life just may indeed be a timeless piece.

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