Film Review: POSER: Grungy Portrayal of the Columbus Underground Scene is an Ecstatic Jam Sesh With a Few Rough Notes [Tribeca 2021]

Poser Review

Poser (2021) Film Review from the 20th Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a movie directed by Ori Segev and Noah Dixon, starring Sylvie Mix, Bobbi Kitten, Abdul Seidu, Drew Johnson, Rachel Keefe, and Nick Samson.

Jealous dynamics can exist anywhere, regardless the size of the microcosm. Sometimes it’s within an entire culture; other times it’s among just a handful of friends; most times, it’s both. Poser, the feature debut from the Columbus-based production house Loose Films, is a peek into the intramural relationships within the Ohio city’s underground music scene, and what happens when the desire for acceptance overtakes authenticity.

Clad with aqua-green ombrés and ballpoint tats that together scream ‘crusty seapunk’, Lennon (Sylvie Mix) snakes her way through the musty basements and cavernous warehouses of Columbus that play host to the low-budget pop-up shows of the city’s independent music culture. Obsessed with music (as the name she shares with a famous British musician may suggest) but rather out of the local scene’s loop, she starts a podcast both to document it and to serve as her in-route. Adorned with headphones and her smartphone as the mic, she samples the offerings from indie rock to alt-folk to “queer death pop” as research for the pod, jotting down tidbits in her bound notebook whenever she can.

Lennon’s non-threatening stature and quiet demeanor makes it easy for people to talk to her and vice versa, as she frequently likes to reinforce that these interviews move her out of her comfort zone. Catching the eye of the poetic Micah (Abdul Seidu) and the energetic Bobbi Kitten (playing a fictionalized version of herself), Lennon is soon brought into the central fold of a music scene consisting of numerous secret shows, rambunctious hangouts, and copious smokes. She starts to open herself up emotionally, too, allowing Bobbi to be a bouncing board for her own lyrical ambitions.

But the longer she’s in their company and the more vulnerable Lennon makes herself, the more Bobbi begins to pick up some weird vibes … particularly once she begins hearing Lennon’s lyrics at shows besides her own. Bobbi wonders what’s really in Lennon’s notebook, and if the existence of her podcast is nothing but a nefarious ruse.

What makes Lennon’s turn so freaky in its scope is how well she plays her hustle.

Despite her cluelessness (or at least her appearance as such), her initial approach parallels the music scene in terms of a similar aesthetics and ethos – that is, a minimalist, DIY, do-what-you-can-with-what-you-have one, disconnected from capital interests and done solely for love of the medium. Lennon’s supposed penchant for “lo-fi sound” and “honesty” – i.e. how she records interviews digitally only to re-record them on a tape deck – is echoed by directors Ori Segev and Noah Dixon’s lightweight style. With Logan Floyd’s atmospheric cinematography and a soundtrack composed of Columbus’ underground’s finest (including the featured Bobbi Kitten’s duo, Damn The Witch Siren), Poser highlights the visceral and mysterious energy that these underground shows exude, while also feeling authentic and truthful in its embrace of the avant-garde weirdos that are the lifeblood such counterculture.

(Sidenote: as a Midwest native myself, such sense of place made me nostalgic for those post-college cold winter nights at smoky dive bars scattered all throughout the city, spacing out to psych rock and/or house music ‘til the early morning hours.)

To then spin that around just as Lennon does, from a curious obsession to a destructive one – and even toeing the line into psychological horror in doing so – makes its climax all the more unsettling.

And yet, that turn is also Poser’s crux. It’s a violent shift into another approach that feels stylistically more sinister, but in a hurried way. It’s not unwelcome nor wholly ineffective – on the contrary, it’s where the film becomes all the more alluring by suggesting a more ethereal meditation on obsession, beyond the realms that grungy art-house drama can provide. However, it feels like an undeserved transformation, especially given Mix’s lo-fi, disaffected portrayal of Lennon from the get-go. Seeing as the film focuses on envy, Mix’s performance could be seen as thematically plausible – i.e. someone who is a nobody fully usurping a somebody – but the overall primitive set-up as such makes Poser’s ultimate morality play feel less than robust.

Regardless, Poser is a marvelous debut for Segev and Dixon that showcases the propensity for big personalities in the smallest of places. It’s as much a love letter to Midwestern artist culture as much as it is a soft critique of it, filled with industrial skylines and pulse-pounding tracks. A great mixtape for a cinematic chill sesh.

Rating: 7/10

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