Gray House

Austin Lynch, son of auteur filmmaker David, channels his father’s unorthodox ways in this rambling, episodic visual poem on loneliness and alienation in America. The film consists of five parts, three of which are wordless visits to houses where fictional residents lead solitary lives: a run-down shack in Texas inhabited by a lone fisherman (Denis Lavant), a rustic Virginia cabin where a woman (Dianna Molzan) engages in walks through the woods, and a modernist glass Los Angeles mansion where another woman (Aurore Clément) prepares herself for the day. These are accompanied by nonfiction portraits of two places in which people are congregated, but still feel isolated: a North Dakota oilfield, where sad-faced workers are desperate to earn enough to return to their homes and families, and a women’s prison in Oregon, where the inmates are depressed and hopeless. Both segments juxtapose prolonged, silent visuals of the dreary locales with solitary interviews in which subjects not only express pain at being kept apart from friends and relatives but also feel largely forgotten. Gray House is notable for its striking imagery—Lynch and co-director/cameraman Matthew Booth demonstrate a keen eye for composition and lighting effects—but the emotional impact of this fiction/documentary hybrid is one of almost unrelieved angst and desolation. A strong optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)