Invisible Girlfriend

This artfully shot documentary follows amateur songwriter Charles Fihoil as he tries to track down his invisible girlfriend, whom he imagines to look like the statue of Joan of Arc erected in New Orleans. Divorced three times, the 42-year-old lives with his parents and two of his three kids in Monroe, LA. His son describes him as “a little loopy,” and Fihoil does take a humorous view of most situations (while building a campfire, he quips, “Joanie isn't too keen on fires anymore; that's understandable”). According to his mother, psychiatrists diagnosed him as bipolar paranoid-schizophrenic, but he stopped taking his medication around the time he participated in relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina (filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin met him while making Kamp Katrina [VL-9/07]). With his driver's license suspended, Charles decides to ride his red bicycle 400 miles to the Big Easy to find his dream girl, befriending various strange and colorful denizens of the Deep South along the way in this documentary that plays like a cross between Billy the Kid (VL-6/08) and The Straight Story (VL-3/00). The filmmakers have an eye for the beautiful and the bizarre, giving equal time to their human subject and the cows, cardinals, pelicans, and road kill in the surrounding landscape. The DVD includes two versions of the film (a 48-minute edit and the full 75-minute edition) and more than an hour of extras. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)