Gazer (15) |Close-Up Film Review

Gazer is the sort of film I want to like and support for the courage and determination of those who made it.  

In this case it’s former electrician and now director Ryan J Sloan and his co-writer and lead actress Ariella Mastroianni (whose grandfather is very distantly related to the better known late Italian star of that name, in case  you’re wondering.)   Sloan and Mastroianni raised the finance themselves and shot the film on weekends for two-and-a-half years.

The story starts off intriguingly.   Mastroianni, with her boyish hair cat and intense eyes, looks a bit like Rowan Atkinson’s good looking younger sister.  She plays Frankie, who suffers from a disease called dyschronometria, which makes it hard for her to keep track of time.  When we first meet her, she is working as a garage attendant, ignoring the customers while listening to one of the cassette tapes she uses to help her deal with her disability.  It’s telling her to concentrate on what is in front of her, which happens to be the lighted window of an apartment where a couple are having a row.  As a result of her inattention to the job however, she is sacked.

Frankie lives alone in a sparse one room apartment and is haunted by memories of her husband’s suicide, unsure whether she played a part in it – memories or perhaps hallucinations which sometimes include images similar to a Cronenberg horror film.

Her small daughter is living with her mother in law (Marianne Goodell), who blames Frankie for her son’s death. 

Then one evening Frankie meets a woman (Renee Gagner), who claims she’s being bullied by her brother, who has stolen her car.  She offers Frankie $3000 to break into the apartment – the same one she was observing earlier –  steal the car keys and drive  the car to a remote spot so its owner can escape.  The break in sequence, when Frankie is nearly discovered by the brother is genuinely tense.  Needless to say however the woman and the money never show up and Frankie finds herself on the run under suspicion in connection with the woman’s disappearance.   A situation made all the more confusing and menacing because of her problem with time. 

The problem thereafter however, as Frankie is chasing around the city like a frightened rabbit, is that seen through her eyes we’re never clear what’s going on either.   She’s like a mouse imprisoned on one of those circular traps.  The chasing seems to go on forever, she is threatened, assaulted, made homeless and nearly arrested and the final resolution, when it comes, is one of those unconvincing movie ones, which would never work in real life.  

Ms Mastroianni though is a compelling talent and well worth keeping an eye on