WE WENT TO THE 25 NEW FACES IN INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL >>>
Films: Solitary/Release
Rating: Three out of four stars
Director: Holden Abigail Osborne
Starring: Zachary Osborne, James Franco, Holmes Osborne
Where We Saw It: Duh ... The Grand Cinema
Does It Screen Again?: Hell yes - Thursday, Aug. 26, 2 p.m., at The Grand
At the beginning of Holden Abigail Osborne's duo of films about her brother, we see the real Zachary Osborne captured in a home movie. He seems amiable, kind of crazy in that way where you wonder with excitement just what he'll do next. He looks into the camera and says, "Let's go do some Jackass shit."
This is followed by security camera footage of Zach robbing a fast food joint. After a stint in jail, Zach is released into house arrest, at which point Holden returns to her home town to film his first few days of freedom.
This is Solitary, a short documentary about those awkward first moments of freedom. Zach reenters life with his family, including his daughters whom a relative fears are too young to have remembered their father before he was in prison.
Solitary then blends seamlessly into Release, a fiction short inspired by Zach's relationship with his father, Holmes Osborne, who plays himself in the film. The role of Zach is handed over to James Franco, and suddenly Zach's story is a surreal psychodrama.
In the woods, Franco as Zach is chained to the ground of this lean-to. He is to stay there with his father until he no longer aches for drugs. A scene where Holmes yells at Franco, reprimanding him for thinking only of himself and never of his children, is effective at a couple levels deeper than the surface drama of a father yelling at his child.
Together, these shorts do a wonderful job of playing off of and enriching each other. We learn that Zach violated the terms of his house arrest, and so was back in jail at the time the short was being made, which only contributes to the pain of Release.
These are intensely personal shorts made by a very promising up-and-coming filmmaker. See it before the festival is over, and go to haofilms.com for updates on Zach.