Screen Scene: “Alone With Her”
By Devon Dickau
March 8, 2007 10:02 p.m.
"Alone With Her”
Director Eric Nicholas
IFC First take
3 paws
What would you give to stop being alone?
Morality? Dignity? Sanity?
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, every minute, three people in the United States become victims of stalking.
At first, “Alone With Her” may be mistaken for a public-service announcement warning a naive population of beautiful women that the chances of being stalked are all too high.
But this film, the second from writer-director Eric Nicholas, is anything but the U.S.’s next message movie. Surely, the general theme is not without cliche: The film explores the loneliness of an ailing society dependent on technology for communication. But unlike an increasing number of American filmmakers today, Nicholas takes stylistic risk.
Doug, played by Colin Hanks (“Orange County”), is a regular, manipulative new-age creeper. And his obsession with Amy (Ana Claudia Talancón) is more than unhealthy; it is destructive.
The story of “Alone With Her” is told through Doug’s point of view ““ literally, through a series of cameras he has set up so that he can watch Amy at all times. The cameras cut in and out; many are low quality; they are often blocked or moved.
We learn about Doug mostly through the edgy cinematography and editing of the film; he is, in a sense, both the filmmaker and the audience of “Alone With Her,” and Amy is his curvy Hollywood starlet.
Doug’s gaze follows Amy wherever she goes. She is continuously violated: He breaks into her home to install hidden cameras throughout her apartment, follows her to work, and bumps into her at the coffee shop every morning. And it only gets worse.
The movie is self-aware of its own artistic medium. What we see on screen is knowingly physically constrained by Doug’s cameras, but we are also aware that here, we see something that we would not (and, often times, should not) otherwise see.
“Alone With Her” is a comment on the inherent voyeurism of film. And for once we feel guilty for witnessing tragedy on screen.
The film’s thrills are sometimes cheap. Through a series of apparently accidental disasters, Doug becomes closer and closer to the woman he loves, yet hardly knows. But Amy is slower than we are in discovering Doug’s secret obsession, and that tension drives the film.
Hanks is successfully frightening, to say the least. And the sexy Talancón, who gained worldwide stardom when she starred in Carlos Carrera’s “El Crimen del padre Amaro” alongside Gael GarcÃa Bernal, captures strength in naivete. By the end, we feel dirty for enjoying even her smile on screen.
Ultimately, the greatest irony of “Alone With Her” is in the title itself. Without Amy, Doug is alone. Even with her, he is alone. Forever, he will be alone.
And in its powerfully low-key exploration of cinematic self-awareness and American voyeurism, “Alone With Her” is also ““ refreshingly ““ alone.
