Alex Lehmann
Blue Jay

There is a phrase by Paolo Rossi, the comedian, contained in a collection of his monologues published more than twenty years ago, in the early nineties, which says, 'The problem is not when you masturbate at sixteen, the problem is when you do it at thirty-five. Then it means you're alone.'

The monologue is titled, 'When I was little.' It starts more or less like this, 'When I was little... When I remained small.' Clearly alluding to his own stature, as well as to what he meant to be an immaturity that was meant to signify being unprepared in front of life's challenges. Especially when it comes to relating to others. Relationships with the opposite sex. I don't remember all the contents by heart. The last time I read it was really many years ago and, I don't know, I mean, I don't know if it made me laugh back then or not. However, I know that, now that I think about it, deep down that monologue didn't really want to make you laugh. Or it didn't just want to make you laugh.

When you masturbate at thirty-five years old, I'm thirty-two almost thirty-three, it means you're alone and I am alone or at least I feel alone, which would be exactly the same thing because ultimately it's my perception of the state of things that truly matters. I lead a very regular life, according to timings that I had to impose on myself so as not to completely ruin my life from every point of view, but - I mean - within these patterns there is practically no room for any social interaction. Almost every night I dream of being back at school, I have a vivid memory of that period of my life, which I still can't regard positively, and yet... And yet everything that could mean something on an emotional level for me has evidently largely remained there. After that, nothing else happened. At least from this point of view. Yes, of course, there was a woman and when I think of her, the kind of feelings I experience aren't all that different with regards to sadness and melancholy. The sense of infinite loneliness, a loneliness I would define as structural, autarchic, now self-determined in every ideological emotional aspect, rooted deep down in the most remote part of my stomach.

There is still a difference between this love story just mentioned and my experiences during those high school years: as much as it didn't work with her in the end; even though I loved her and she didn't want me; I know I tried. That I did everything I could do. That I attempted to go against those limits I was alluding to. In an awkward, uncoordinated manner, maybe even pathetic. But I did it. On the other hand. On the other hand, during those years, so much of my existence I let things just slide over me. I don't like looking back, I generally don't do it, but if I had to, I don't know if I would then come to the conclusion that, 'It's never too late.'

It follows, following the lines of my reasoning, that even during school years I was in love with a girl. Actually. I would say that although I practically never see her, I'm somehow still in love with this girl. I follow her from afar. Today she is a doctor and an activist for the protection of the environment where she was born, grew up, and still lives, a town in the province of Naples where she holds the role of deputy mayor. She is an incredibly capable and intelligent girl, much more so than me, obviously (she always has been), as well as very beautiful. Clearly, she is emotionally engaged.

I do not hide having tried over the years several times to contact her and reveal what I felt and somehow still feel so forcefully today. After an initial negative response, for a while we corresponded. Then everything ended. In the sense that she stopped responding. Meanwhile, my whole life was and is falling apart, and I feel like a total failure. And then I think two things. I think it's normal if she gives me no consideration. Besides the fact that I am not remotely part of her life. Why should she? What motivation. At most, she could only pity me. The second is that objectively, perhaps, certainly, I should have done something when I could. But I was just a boy, and it's easier to be upset with what I am today than with what I was, one of the many kids always angry with the world.

Of course, while the portrayal of the state of things might appear dramatic, and there is certainly a dramatic component, even tragic, in these considerations of mine, it would also be fallacious to consider my situation as extreme, personal, and as something necessarily pertaining to a 'fixed' template. What I mean is that what is represented, beyond my actual appreciation for the person I've mentioned, constitutes a sort of 'trap'. A snare. Retreating into a dimension that never existed or never was truly experienced in the past to try to escape the only thing that truly matters and exists: the present time. It follows that therefore none of what I have written is necessarily 'personal', what sense would it have had to talk about otherwise, it is instead an aspect of a broader social issue regarding loneliness and dissatisfaction with oneself and one's existence, often closely linked to the difficulty of interacting with others. A topic that might seem light but is in fact very delicate and involves us all. In a certain sense, after all, there are no 'light' or irrelevant topics. Everything that somehow concerns ourselves and the relationships between people is significant and deserves to be considered.

The Duplass brothers, who have variously demonstrated over the years a particular artistic sensitivity in addressing psychological and social issues of this kind, inaugurate their partnership with Netflix with this film (of which they are the executive producers) directed by director Alex Lehmann and written and interpreted by Mark Duplass.

Presented at the Toronto International Film Festival last September and released in U.S. theaters in October, the film is titled, 'Blue Jay', and for its contents, typically dramatic, and for its aesthetics and style, it can be considered a typical film of the productions by the two brothers Mark and Jay Duplass. As such, 'Blue Jay', should therefore be regarded as another chapter, in my opinion an important one (how to underestimate the importance of the partnership with Netflix in spreading the genre's works), of the history of the 'Mumblecore' movement of which the Duplass brothers were among the initiators at the beginning of the last decade.

Without dwelling too much. What is 'Mumblecore', a movement that arose and spread in the US starting in 2000, what are its main characteristics? Essentially three: first of all, the production takes place with a very limited budget. This initially for obvious economic reasons, essentially arising as manifestations and episodes of completely independent cinema. Even if over time, even when the genre began to receive attention and some money started to circulate, the basic principle was not deviated from, I believe also to maintain a certain spontaneity on the part of the artists involved. As if they all had to choose to voluntarily give themselves to the work in question: in this sense, it follows, their contribution on an emotional level (which is by no means secondary in all cases and in particular for this type of film, which essentially relies only on this!), is or at least should be greater. The second characteristic is therefore the total absence of special effects or any 'trick' in every possible sense. The direction is generally essential: in this sense, even the choice, in my opinion a clever one, of black and white for 'Blue Jay' seems to be a whim. Almost an excess or a 'pose'. Even if we can search for an ideological will in the fact that although the entire work is set in the present, it transports the two protagonists and consequently the viewers on a sort of journey into the past and memories where often all things can appear blurred and of an undefined color. Third point, the most important one, the plot generally has dramatic contents and is entirely based on the interaction between the various characters (almost always between thirty and forty years old) who despite being few in number.

'Blue Jay' meets all the requirements of the genre. The story, in fact, which I have probably hinted at in my long preamble, concerns a former couple of school-time sweethearts, Jim and Amanda, who by sheer chance meet again in the small town where they lived as kids and where they've both had to return for different reasons and twenty years after the last time they saw each other. The meeting is practically the only real happening of the film, which essentially follows everything that happens during the following hours in which the two, who have had radically different lives, confront each other about their present and past lives. An encounter that is not and perhaps cannot be a reunion nor a reconciliation or a new beginning, but perhaps more simply a sweet dive into the past and a confrontation with a present which for Amanda (Sarah Paulson) seems full of unknowns and mysteries to discover, while for Jim this constitutes a reality instead difficult and which a new separation in a sort of 'long goodbye', to quote Mr. Raymond Chandler, can only contribute to making even more bitter and literally unbearable.

It's easy to think, speaking of an 'encounter', of Francesco Guccini, but I wouldn't define the contents of this film as poetic in the same way. They are instead raw and when they try to be poetic, they do not want to be so in a high way, but by quoting 'No More I Love You' by Annie Lennox in a sort of commemoration of a high school prom night and/or what are the many silly dreams and games between a couple of youngsters. But the ending, unrevealed, opens itself to various considerations and viewpoints. The director doesn't set any final point and prefers to leave the viewer to cradle in what are at this point HIS memories while the credits roll with the background voice of the greatest contemporary songwriter, Bill Callahan.

An essential film, as the school of the genre desires, and where the presence of a third character, who is the elderly manager of a liquor store the two frequented as kids and who recognizes them and wants to recognize them still as that carefree couple of kids from twenty years earlier, a seemingly irrelevant figure but clearly revealing and in its simplicity capable of casting a sort of input, a line with which to hook the two protagonists, constitutes a minor variation, akin to a sort of electric shock to test, to almost want to measure the reactions of the audience in noticing a slight deviation from the unique formula of dialogue between the two and to give them a concrete signal that something is happening. As if this third person were a kind of key witness in the process into which Jim and Amanda slowly settle as if addicted.

'Blue Jay' is a film with contents only apparently light but in truth necessarily dramatic as dramatic is loneliness and when we try to fight it clinging desperately to something that unfortunately has passed and now is no more and in the total inability to look through the thick fog of present and future time. That of Duplass cinema is a film with 'simple' content, those little problems we all have, and which many have the presumption to underestimate or claim not to have. It's a cinema made only of ideas and by humans for humans. This makes it by necessity something truly authentic and important.