Mark Reviews Movies: POSER

Poser, Oscilloscope Laboratories

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 30, 2022

Co-directors Noah Dixon and Ori Segev's Poser serves as both a behind-the-scenes tour of the indie music scene in Columbus, Ohio, and an aching portrait of wanting to be a part of something. There's a real sense of authenticity to both elements of this narrative, as well as the feeling of discovering a little niche of creativity—for good and for not-so-good—and the depths of loneliness of the film's main character, who has no idea of herself—for good and definitely for not-at-all-good.

The story, from Dixon's screenplay, revolves around Lennon Gates (Sylvie Mix, in a noteworthy debut), who lives in Columbus and exists lingering the backgrounds of assorted spaces. In the opening scene, Lennon is non-entity at an art gallery showing, where some people observe and comment upon a particular painting. The only reasons Lennon might stand out from the crowd is her tendency to wear bulky, analog headphone wherever she goes and the camera's sudden interest in her own interest in that group discussing that painting. When they leave, Lennon walks over to where they were hovering, digs into a brochure on a table, and retrieves her cellphone, which had been covertly recording the discussion.

At first, there is nothing nefarious about Lennon's actions. She simply possesses some deep curiosity for capturing sounds, listening to them, and transferring those digital recordings to cassette. Her apartment is filled with piles and piles of those recordings, all of them labeled and showing no rhyme or reason as to why Lennon recorded any of them in the first place.

This is simply her existence—watching and listening and taking in information. Mix's performance captures that simple, innocent notion of inquisitiveness and, more to the point, the complete isolation that has become Lennon's life, for whatever reasons might be behind it. At a dinner out, Lennon's older sister Janie (Rachel Keefe), who holds a regular and well-paying 9-to-5 job, doesn't offer many clues, except to note that their relationship is one of lapsed communication, that Lennon's relationship with the sisters' mother is strained, and that Lennon has never really found a passion outside of her recordings.

Like anyone with a basic understanding of audio recording and an interest in the arts, Lennon decides to move a bit outside her "comfort zone" and to start podcast. The goal of her show, as she announces with practiced but still stilted enthusiasm in the first episode, is to interview local musicians, attend live shows, and get "exclusive" performances from her guests each week. She seems to take to it well enough, tracking down local acts, arranging meetings, recording and putting together episodes, and doing it all while holding down a day job at a banquet hall. Even so, Lennon remains on the outside looking in, as a rather sad scene of her trying to get into a club, only to have to look at the flashing lights through a window, makes painfully clear.

The film's sense of discovery comes from the filmmakers' inclusion of real-life Columbus musicians, playing themselves more or less (The vapid platitudes and philosophical ambitions—such as one musician claiming an upcoming album will get at the heart of the interconnectedness of everything on an atomic level—have to be a knowing gag, we hope), while also performing on stage, at parties, and in intimate jam sessions for Lennon's podcast. Everyone knows or, at least, knows of each other, and the story pauses for the music talk, the music itself, and little tidbits of history—notably, albeit initially with the feeling of randomness, the story of a teenage boy who attended a show, passed out drunk on some railroad tracks, and met a gruesome fate. It doesn't matter how much of this is genuine and how much of it is fictionalized to some degree. Dixon and Segev create a communal sense of these various figures, their shared passion, and the stories they all would know just from being a part of that community.

Among the musicians, the key character is Bobbi Kitten, a local celebrity and the front woman for, along with the enigmatic and mask-wearing Z Wolf (playing himself), the duo Damn the Witch Siren. By the way, the real Kitten is a musician, a local underground celebrity, and is half of that band, and in casting her as the biggest star of this scene and the object of Lennon's growing obsession, the filmmakers have scored a real coup.

Kitten's on-stage energy, which is all hard-rocking charisma and sensuality, transfers incredibly well to her scenes with Lennon. As a performer, she's clearly a force, but in those interviews and quiet moments of existing outside the music, Kitten displays such sincerity in knowing herself, her appeal, and the mystery of her creative drive. Some might dismiss this performance as a mere case of someone playing herself. That, though, would be to miss out on how well Kitten embodies the rebelliousness, passion, and talent that's the best of what the music scene at the heart of the film has to offer.

In a way, the rest of the plot, which has Lennon pretending to be a songwriter in her own right (Those exclusive performances of songs that musicians haven't publicly performed yet help her fake it) and becoming increasingly enamored with the idea of Bobbi, is nothing new or particularly special, but it's not the plot in which the filmmakers find their own inspiration or purpose. Poser comes across as an insider's look at both a unique little world and the melancholy, desperate mindset of an outsider. The film is so successful at portraying the former that there's a discomforting, haunting understanding for the latter.

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