Athens International Film + Video Festival review: Teddy Boy is a bizarre and confusing feature directorial debut from Sean Jourdan, with sterile dialogue and flat characters.
Sean Jourdan’s Teddy Boy is baffling to no end. Awkward when it wants to be casual and sluggish when it wishes to be thrilling, it finds a home with The Oogieloves in The Big Balloon Adventure and A Talking Cat!?! as one of the most casually bizarre films I’ve seen in my four years in college.
Normally this is where I dig, if vaguely, into the plot and summarize what the gist of the feature. To tell you the truth, though, I really don’t have much of a clue what Jourdan, who also wrote Teddy Boy, envisioned as the point for his first feature-length film as a sole director. The film follows a dysfunctional couple (Kevin Sean Ryan and Danielle Prall) who, for whatever reason, have an attractive young tennis player (Joey Bicicchi) live in their house, only to find him trying to hit up the missus and then possibly steal some jewelry, much to the husband’s dissatisfaction. Then they invite the man on a boating trip for so reason, where they get trapped on an island and the young man and woman find themselves getting closer.
Where the conflict begins and ends is an unanswered mystery throughout. It’s evident Jourdan intended this, one would assume, as some kind of semi-sexual thriller, but Prall and Bicicchi never have any sexual chemistry and Ryan’s character so rarely involved effectively in their maybe relationship to add any genuine tension or elevation in pathos from the audience. What’s left is a boring, hapless mess that never discerns where it wants to go and, ultimately, what it wants to say, if it really has anything to say whatsoever.
Add in Jourdan’s poor direction of his three performers and you get an unusually robotic film that comes across all-too-often as sterile and meandering when it wants to be stimulating and intense. To substitute for the lack in genuine or original character motivation, Jourdan often resorts to strange and unconvincing storytelling mechanics, which only topline the confusion and disinterest felt throughout.
All this said, Jourdan—while still a ways to go in terms of directing actors—does seem well studied in visual storytelling. There are more than a few well-composed shots from him and his cinematographer Kuba Zelazek. These make Teddy Boy look as lush and cinematic as they can, and succeed in that as it’s evident their Kickstarter-based budget was fairly low. Perhaps as time goes on, he can become more established as a filmmaker. Maybe he should direct a couple stage shows to understand what performers need to succeed in their work, because he, if this movie is any implication, still has lessons to learn before making harkening and convincing characters.
Not helping is Jourdan’s often-stilted dialogue, enunciating the robotic feel of the picture. It’s hard to tell, especially since I don’t recollect seeing these performers in any of their other works, but it seems these cast members have more potential then they’re given. Ryan, in particular, finds choice moments to prove he’s a seasoned and commendable actor, and Prall, to her credit, pours her heart out in a number of scenes to try to make the film come to life. As such, at least a couple scenes have some friction, and are helped by Nick Martin’s editing.
It seems Jourdan may have a good feature in him somewhere. Unfortunately, he didn’t make one with this film. While it gets less inept and almost enjoyably goofy as it goes along, Teddy Boy ends up merely bizarre and dissatisfying. From the weak performances, to the lifeless direction and then to the equally sterile writing, there’s no rhyme or reason here, and it makes for a continuously confusing film. To the filmmaker’s credit, however, it’ll stay in my mind for at least the time being, but only so I can figure out what exactly he tried to achieve.
Rating: 2/5 stars
@thewillofash
