Film Review: ACTUAL PEOPLE: A Keenly Critical Core at the Heart of this Monotonous Indie Drama [Locarno 2021]

Actual People Review

Actual People (2021) Film Review from the 74th Annual Locarno Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Kit Zauhar, starring Zauhar, Scott Albrecht, Isabelle Barbier, Mae Claire, Shirley Huang, Richard Lyntton, Randall Palmer, Vivian Zahuar, Tanya Morgan, and Henry Fulton Winship.

As a filmmaker myself, I will never not admire anyone for pulling feature-length projects together on only miniscule budgets and creative gusto – the latter of which Kit Zauhar has in troves. Zauhar’s only in her mid-20s and she’s already written, directed, and starred in – the triple threat! – her feature debut Actual People. From here, it seems like the sky’s the limit for her … and let’s hope so, because this is actually a bit of a slog.

Billed as “a mumblecore for people of color”, Actual People plays like any other entry in that lo-fi dramatic subgenre: twenty- and thirty-somethings navigating the onset of adulthood’s complexities through drugs, sex, and a general sense of apathetic detachment. In this case we’re following Zauhar as Riley, a biracial Asian-American woman who’s only a couple of weeks out from graduating college in New York City and has suddenly lost all ambition. Rather than pull herself together to keep from flunking one of her classes, she’d rather hit the bars every night and pursue one-night stands – partly to distract her from the non-stop inquisition about her post-grad plans, but mostly to keep her mind off David (Randall Palmer), her ex-boyfriend of three years who “emotionally cheated” on her.

Thankfully there’s Leo (Scott Albrecht) to catch Riley’s eye, a friend of a friend from her hometown of Philadelphia who she can’t stop thinking about after a post-party hook-up. Convinced that he’s her next beau Riley becomes obsessed with trying to meet up with him again and make something work – even if that means making the move back home. This single goal gives her enough energy to keep going even though everything else – from friends to family to schoolwork – is falling by the wayside. With the finish line of graduation soon approaching, Riley may end up spiraling out before she can cross it.

While the repetitive nature of the plot might reflect Riley’s monotonous perception of her late senior year, it makes the film feel very one-note. The amateurism of Zauhar and her cohorts adds authenticity and annoyance in equal measure, and it’s hard to quantify what the film’s end result actually is. Is it effective, or is it just lazy? Hard to say. The cuts to black in the pacing are a nice touch, though, as they help to break up the story into smaller, digestible chunks of the slice-of-life variety (regardless of how accurate that descriptor might be to Zauhar’s work).

When Actual People interrogates its root themes is when the film really shines. Zauhar visualizes millennial burnout via the drinking binges, Adderall-fueled writing seshes, and bored voiceover readings of text messages that hide any hint of emotion, but it’s how she conveys the psychic damage of it all that’s the most affecting. Riley’s lack of certainty amidst an increasingly complicated world that demands it (not to mention a modern American society that also sold her entire generation on singular and expensive concepts of fulfillment and success) is undoubtedly going to result in some acute, toxic anxiety. On top of all that, she has trouble comprehending her cultural identity and feels lost in the overlaps (i.e. not taking sides between her friend and a potential bar fuck over Asian representation, feeling generally ugly after David broke up with her, and forcing a connection between herself and Leo due to their biracial ethnicities and nothing else).

By the second half of the film Riley is in a full-on spiral just to cope, and eventually she learns just how destructive her actions are to those who remain in her inner circle. The climactic breakfast scene really hits these concepts on the head, revealing the inevitably tumultuous toll that compounded events can and will take.

The irony of Actual People is in its very conceit. The mumblecore archetype feels very well-trodden, but in these particular instances about the college-to-career pipeline and casual racism/misogyny causing young adults severe mental duress, that familiarity and relatability is the film’s strength … which, in the context of society at-large, is all the more damning. The monotonous tone is reflective of how millions of millennials and zoomers must feel as they stare down this capitalistic hellscape that forces them to fit into precise labels and checkboxes if they’re ever to succeed. While Zauhar doesn’t make it fun nor even aesthetically pleasing to watch, Actual People sure as unfortunate hell makes a lot of sense.

Thus, as a debut effort, Actual People serves as an announcement to keep our eyes on Zauhar as an emerging critical voice in the realm of independent cinema. It’s very rough around the edges, but at least it has a keen core.

Rating: 6/10

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