TRIBECA 2010: THE SENTIMENTAL ENGINE SLAYER Review

Opening with the strangling of a prostitute, and ending with something of an unwitting role reversal for our protagonist, THE SENTIMENTAL ENGINE SLAYER is a psychosexual nightmare leeching off of David Lynch existentialism... Or... by way of Jean Cocteau and LSD, a tragicomic spin on slacker/scenster woes. Whatever way you look at it, Omar Rodriguez Lopez has cut out an ambitious section of the cinematic cloth to draw upon, with this, his feature debut where he also writes, produces, scores and stars.
 
Though a lot of what he does may feel like rudimentary scribbles, doodling fragments of fragments, to the point of where the film gets truly uncomfortable in its shit, consider it like this; It is kind of like being a drug mule with a very mixed bag of narcotics shoved up your rear. It's painful, and maybe you don't want to do it, but man, that rainbow colored frenzy is going to offer a lot of possibilities. And that is what Rodriguez Lopez presents here - a lot of possibilities, and a lot of promise; the film showcases an intrinsic and bold cinematic knack and know-how that is not yet molded, nor wielded with finesse, but is there nonetheless.

And so it goes...  

El Paso, Texas twentysomething, Barlam sees himself as something of a social cripple, wearily traversing the florescent strip mall dichotomies and aimless grocery store clerk mythologies of the American Southwest. He's got friends and hobbies. Well kinda... He lives with his younger sister, addict Nati, and her gringo slouch of a boyfriend, Zack, in the house their parents seemingly abandoned when they split up years ago. He collects and builds model cars. Well really just one car over and over again: A 1967 Mercury Cougar.
And he's got friends... well at least there's that Puerto Rican High School kid he keeps stalking because he looks just like 'B'. And yeah there's his manger at the discount store, Oscar; the older guy with swagger to spare.
Boredom is already well past set in for Barlam, and now's the time for action, or else...

I suppose at this point (since some of you are thinking it) I should mention, yup, the Rodriguez Lopez here is "that" Rodriguez Lopez of the band The Mars Volta; a band I've heard of, but never heard. Apparently a downright musical acrobat, teetering on avant garde/progressive rock what-have-yous, I can't truly vouch for the music, but Rodriguez Lopez seems to carry the same tenacity he has in his recording career on over to his filmmaking.
 
Despite what sounds like a conventional set up, things are clearly weird from the get go, thanks to the unsettled, bouncy nature of the narrative technique - We may stick with one scene till it almost seems through and then suddenly shift away to an event that happened before or after (or maybe never happened at all) perhaps not returning to resolve the previous scene for a good five, ten or twenty minutes. And even then it may just be another neurotic blip on the radar of Barlam's distraught being, before we are whisked away again, backed by an incessant wall of sound, which drowns, drives, pulses through the picture like a techno, atomic jack hammer.

Rodriguez Lopez as Barlam himself, balances quite a feat, and while the performance isn't anything to scream about, what he does with the slightest suggestion is affective, readily backed by his own psychotropic directorial toolbox. Barlam seesaws between a harmless, ineffectual youth on a quest for existential and sexual deliverance, and a man tussling with the psychotic advent of a borderline incestuous, sexually ambiguous, madman.  .

It is clear then that SENTIMENTAL ENGINE SLAYER refuses to be anything expected. It is true DIY filmmaking, with all the pitfalls of self-indulgence willingly intact. And a film ready to take risks no matter what the outcome may be.