It’s not easy to find. It’s an indie film. Which means it’s only shown in select theaters. Luckily for me, it was showing at a cinema in the Village. Yesterday was the last day of screening. That made me go. (Like many writers, I work to deadline.) I’d heard good things. Lamb had launched at SXSW and I’d heard buzz about it. Glad I went with a friend because it would have been hard to absorb its body-blow in solitude. It’s a brilliantly paced, wise and gorgeous exploration of a young girl’s power and vulnerability, butted up against the complexity and suppression that comes with being a middle-aged man. (It reminded me of that poem by Gregory Orr “Who’d Want To Be A Man”, do you know it? If not, printed below.)
Girl meets man in a shopping center parking lot and everything you expect to happen isn’t what happens. The acting is superb. The child who plays the 11 years old girl…where did they find her? Ross Partridge plays the fine line between paternalistic love and lechery. And…as a Mad Men fan, I got a laugh seeing Freddy turn up as a meddling middle manager with bad hair replacement. The film is just 97 minutes. But full-length disturbing. Mesmerizing. Haunting…long after you leave the theater. Big splash on the Rotten Tomatoes-meter from this writer who now really wants to read the book.
UPDATE: Just learned that Lamb is now available on iTunes.
Who’d Want to Be a Man?
With his heart
a black sack
in which a small
animal’s trapped.
With his grief
like a knot
tied at birth,
balled up and hard.
With his rage
that smashes the ten
thousand things
without blinking.
With his mind
like a tree on a cliff—
its roots, fists
clutching stone.
With his longing
that’s a dry well
and where is the rain?
by Gregory Orr, from CITY OF SALT, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995