Lets face it. The music that brings back the most memories is not always the best music in the world. The pop music of the 80’s is something that framed my high school and college years and, for good or bad, gives me a nostalgic feeling even when the music itself is awful. The Finn Taylor film Cherish is filled with this music, some good, some bad, all vital.

Cherish is a wonderfully quirky little film that actually deserves its “indie” billing. Not willing to follow any formula whatsoever, it is at one moment hilarious, the next heartbreaking, and the next exhilarating. It is a real treat to see a movie that is so clearly made the way the writer/director wanted, box office be damned (plus it’s actually good).

The movie opens with our heroine, Zoe (Robin Tunney) showing off her delightful geekiness in her office, where she is clearly socially uncomfortable. We soon learn that Zoe is basically always socially uncomfortable, unable to really connect with anyone at more than the most superficial of levels. Zoe has a rather mad crush on office playboy Andrew (Jason Priestly) and in what is undoubtedly the funniest scene in the film, has vivid fantasies of him in various male-model type poses. While crashing an office get together, she actually gets the chance to hook up with Andrew, only to be abducted by a man who crashes her and her car into a policeman. The man escapes; leaving Zoe intoxicated at the scene of the death of a police officer. Nobody believes her story, and really, why should they? Nobody saw the mystery man and Zoe was clearly driving the car drunk. As a result of some lawyerly delay tactics, her trial is put off for over a year, in the hopes that things will cool down. Zoe is put on the “bracelet program” in which she wears an ankle bracelet at all times, and is not allowed to move more than 57 feet beyond the central monitor. Basically she is under house arrest in a crappy apartment in a bad neighborhood indefinitely.

Now, Zoe is not particularly comfortable with her own company, to the point where her therapist has asked her when she last spent some time alone. Now she is spending all of her time alone. The viewer gets to be a fly on the wall as she learns to entertain herself, explore her limitations, and even connect with some of the people around her contained space. She befriends the man downstairs, Max (Ricardo Gil), another lonely soul, as well as some of the kids who hang out on the street below her apartment.

Time moves slowly for Zoe. In one of the movies most affecting scenes, we see her sitting on a couch as the camera pans around and behind her. The seasons, and her hair and clothes change in a sort of time lapse way that beautifully illustrates time passing around her. Her only real company is Bill Daly (Tim Blake Nelson) who visits periodically to check on the ankle bracelet. They develop a relationship based on the need by both of them to connect with someone, anyone. Circumstance allows for them to connect with each other. While Daly fantasizes about her, Zoe feels something of a love/hate for the man who holds the keys to her captivity.

Throughout the unfolding story of Zoe’s confinement, we have a running thread of the presence of the man who abducted her in the first place. We see him in shadow and half-light, clearly obsessed with her and, once again, fantasizing about her. The characters in Cherish do a lot of fantasizing. They are lonely people who fill their lives with images of what they believe would make them happy.

Zoe is immensely immature at the outset of the film. Even after being arrested and confined, her concerns are in the here and now. Her appreciation of the true consequences of a trial are clearly limited, her concerns being almost exclusively with her immediate discomfort. As time slowly passes, we watch her subtly mature. By the time she is informed of her impending trial, she is clearly distraught over the possible outcome, and takes matters into her own hands. She believes, correctly so, that no one will ever believe her story. Her fate is her own, and she calls upon her meager resources to make that fate what she desperately needs it to be.

Cherish is a movie filled with the lonely and alone. People who don’t fit in, are overlooked, or are actively targeted because of their inability to be “just like everyone else”. Combined with both humor and thriller elements, this makes for an immensely watchable movie. The performers all seem tremendously comfortable within their roles. If there is any justice in Hollywood, this movie should make Robin Tunney a star. She plays the blossoming nerd with such subtlety and grace; you almost don’t notice the changes until they have passed you by. Jason Priestly, while certainly not an actor I expect to see on a podium any time soon, has a certain ability to parody his former teen idol self to perfection. His GQ poses early in the movie are, as I said before, the comic highlight. Tim Blake Nelson plays the geeky ankle bracelet checker to perfection. He tries to change and grow, but just can’t quite make it work. His fascination with Zoe is all the more palpable as she does grow. Brad Hunt as the stalker is equal parts creepy and pathetic, heavily leaning toward the pathetic. Another lonely, fantasizing, obsessive person, but this one willing to take things way too far. One flaw in the movie is that the connection between Zoe and her stalker is not completely revealed. It is hinted at, but not as completely as I would have liked.

Wrapped around all of these themes, loneliness, fantasy, obsession, is a musical score, which is a character in itself. Music helps define both these people and their world, and it fills the movie with atmosphere and a certain pathos, even though much of it is up tempo and pop in the extreme. The photography (by Barry Stone) and direction are wonderful, capturing both Zoe’s physical confinement, as well as her small personal world. This is a movie that defies characterization. It is not of one genre, but many. And somehow, it all works.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD