In this assured, masterful film, 17 minutes of storytelling are used to the fullest extent; there is no fat to be trimmed here. Suffice it to say, McGowan's decades of acting and watching filmmaking happen on set have prepared her for such a confident short film. Sundance rightfully snapped it up for their 2014 festival season, and it gives me hope that more Hollywood gatekeepers won't overlook women so much in the future. But on to the story.
Dawn features Tara Barr as a teenage girl growing up in Kennedy-era America. Her siblings have grown up and moved on, leaving a sparsely decorated, vacant house and strict parents in their wake. To ease the loneliness, Dawn, like many of us, loses herself in film any chance she can afford a screening of a picture down at the local movie house. Her eyes linger a little too long on a local gas station attendant (Reiley McClendon), and from then on, her fate is sealed.
It's not an overreach to say that McGowan has entered the territory of David Lynch; the acting is understated with a current of menace beneath the alternately contrasting bright and hopeful daylight scenes and the murky blue vistas of an America gone by, settling into night. We are fully immersed in McGowan's world without irony while her cinematographer --- whose name is oddly absent from IMDB or any press releases --- is rumored to have shot on actual celluloid. And that's a shame because the images are stunning and vibrant; I want to know who this person is!
At any rate, the film itself could stand in for a metaphor of the 1960s in America. Many see that era as a period when the country lost its innocence withe the Bay of Pigs, the assassination of JFK and Robert Kennedy, and the lamented entry into the Vietnam War. As a character, Dawn's innocent flirtation with an ex-football player and his delinquent friends proves that looks can betray intentions, and some of the worst monsters look like normal human beings.
Recently, I posted the trailer here. But now you can watch Dawn for yourself on McGowan's YouTube channel or conveniently below. What do you think?