7 Splinters in Time has to be the trippiest film in this year’s Cinequest. The detective Darius (Edoardo Ballerini – Corky Caporale in The Sopranos) is seriously confused. He can’t remember large chunks of his past. And then he’s confronted by an exact look-alike in a most unlikely place. Soon, even more doppelgängers arrive in the story. Darius is trying to figure out what’s going on- and so is the audience.
We go from place to place and, possibly, from time to time. And Darius and/or his lookalikes keep showing up. It’s as if one’s life were depixelated, digitally compressed and then defectively reassembled. Artifacts from other periods of time – Polaroid camera, rotary phone, microfiche viewer – are clues that time travel may be involved here.
Story threads are braided together, some more vividly nightmarish than others. There’s plenty of eye candy and sometimes there’s the feeling of Fellini on Dexedrine. If you like your movies linear and unambiguous, you will likely be impatient until the explanation in the last 20 minutes. But it’s fun to settle in and try to figure out what is going on.
7 Splinters is the feature film debut for writer-director Gabriel Judet-Weinshel. To depict Darius’ different realities (what he calls the “fractured psyche”), Judet-Weinshel used 8mm, 16mm, 35mm film and analog still film, along with the full range of digital, from low-resolution 30-frame video to the large format digital Red Camera. The effect is very cool.
Greg Bennick is excellent as the hyperkinetic mystery figure Luka. Lynn Cohen is a howl as the salty curmudgeon Babs, Darius’ elderly neighbor. Both are effective counterpoints to Ballerini’s chilly and stony Darius.
The beloved character actor Austin Pendleton plays The Librarian, a much more pivotal character than initially apparent. Pendleton has a zillion screen credits, including Frederick Larrabee in What’s Up, Doc? and Gurgle in Finding Nemo. I think I heard his character say, “You are the lizard warrior”. It’s that kind of movie.
Cinequest hosts the world premiere of 7 Splinters in Time. The film is listed under its alternative title of Omphalos, so you can find its screenings here in the Cinequest program.
