SEAT 25 (2017)

Seat 25 was recommended to me by someone whose artistic talent and sensibility I respect. I like when friends refer films to me because it gets me to look beyond the films I would choose for myself. Sometimes I love their movie referrals, and other times, as in the case of Seat 25, I don't.

I did enjoy the performance by the lead actress, Madeleine Cooke, who also is a co-writer and producer of the project. She played the main character Faye Banks with a clear presence that gave access to her feelings of alienation in ways I felt were easily accessible. And depressing. Faye is a woman in a beige, uninspiring marriage and a thankless job as a Employment Termination Assistant, an axeman who delivers the news to poor souls that they are fired. Her family is physically and emotionally unavailable; her sister is a negative sterotype of a proclaimed free spirit who is in actuality a freeloader. Faye's husband is portrayed as a one dimensional man going through his days on auto-pilot, escaping to console games, life cliques, ("we're going to try for a baby now, it's the next logical step"), and briefcase-in-hand, bland morning exits.

Faye feels like an alien on planet earth and has been captivated by Mars since she was a child, and so naturally when a lottery for a ticket on a shuttle to Mars comes up, Faye applies... and is chosen to go. I'm not a believer in the idea that life on Mars is realistic or desirable, so I was out of this narrative from it's inception. I settled in to watch the film as a metaphor, and managed to find a few interesting moments in her interactions with her neighbor Peter, a stay-at-home dad, and with Teodor, one of the employees she fired; I hoped these relationships would go somewhere substantial, but I ultimately felt they were pawns to manipulative the story in ways I found void of meaningful impact.

Artistically I appreciated the cinematography; Faye's colorful, quirky wardrobe; and the set designs, even in her very beige house.

For me, Seat 25 never took off.