Peter and Walter Kloss funded the film, with Peter Kloss penning the screenplay while the cutting-edge postmodernist filmmaker Assured “Here After” adapted primarily focuses on social dramas – following Claire Hiller Christina Britton, an American divorced woman living in Rome and teaching in a girls’ school. Claire’s daughter Robin, Who wants to be a pianist ’s dreams go to a prestigious conservatory and is quite determined about it, hopes in her own way. Portrayed as partially mute, she utilizes her voice through sign language, as well as music although most of the time she wears a smiling face. There is not much to her anyway.
Chaplin the debut film for an industry long-time producer Robert Salerno (“21 Grams,” “A Single Man,” “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”) explores more of the horror territory with a creepy kid, a sad family back-story and plenty of Catholicism. Where – somehow unsurprisingly – Salerno does manage to have some faults is his direction. He often uses tilted perspectives, steady rainfall and similar clichés to define an atmosphere with intrigue. Quite soon however this style becomes tiresome, and has been seen many times. Over the years he has been associated with a number of creative independent films – Vok lux and Nocturnal animals are also his fabulous credits – and therefore it is dizzying as to why he would want to tell this story at this time now that he is the one taking charge himself.
One day, while rushing for an important audition, Robin gets into a bad bicycle accident (it happens to be raining as a rule). For 20 minutes, doctors declare her clinically dead. It would be too easy to say that lo and behold, but no, she does come back to life – but it is a little different this time. For example, she does speak, and it’s been nearly ten years without hearing her voice. But more often than not her mood is rather nasty; as if gloating, she wants to sit in front of the TV and watch some cartoons or play rock music for half a day, and the corners of her mouth lift as her eyes darken.
Is Robin simply a teenage girl experiencing all the normal teenage growing phases accompanied by hormonal changes. Could it be possible that she is possessed? Or can it be that Claire is not well? While readers may find it engaging for a short duration, the struggle between what’s real and what exists only in the mothers’ mind is shallow and boring once ‘Here After’ starts repeating the same cheap enduring shocks. In her workplace, she is able to receive some emotional help from her colleague Viv (Babetida Sadjo, who is more than warm, and welcome), but practically, she has no role for her ex-husband (Giovanni Cirfiera). One day she gets to the point where she has to visit the priest and claims “only God
may help.” This change of direction seems reasonable for her character but does not really shake the film; there was no turning point in her character development, nor was it expectable. Imagine her wearing a huge cross around her neck from the first scene. No brainer, she will turn to prayer when she is desperate. But instead, Britton’s painful expressions worked for the character, and she was able to make the audience feel that Claire’s pain is just as it sounds: painful, but from somewhere unreal.
Britton’s restraint particularly comes to the fore in the fInal act of the film, which is almost dream like although it formally departs from anything that has gone before. The tempo during this section, however, seems to be a little too unnaturally slow taking into consideration how monumental this section is meant to be, making it feel like it is overly long. However, Salerno takes such a chance here stylistically, working with cinematographer Bartosz Nalazek, that one wished this type of boldness had filled the movie from the beginning to the end.
Rather, this slow moving plot about regrets and greens for the lost nearly always stays at a mechanical distance like the gentile drone bird eye views of rome the picture have many of.
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