Hivos Tiger Awards Competition review - TIRED MOONLIGHT by Britni West

Britni West constructs a most loving a remarkable portrait of her small town and small town America in her feature debut Tired Moonlight, which had its international premiere in the Hivos Tiger Award competition at the 44th International Film Festival Rotterdam.
 
There are films that are simply much too hard to categorise - some films simply go beyond cinema and fail to stand within the conventional cinematic boundaries. Britni West's film certainly is one of those. Such a creative and intuitive portrait can only be seen as some type of pictorial and impressionist representation of a place, with its filmmaker's impulsive and intuitive feelings and emotions about it standing firmly as the driving force behind Tired Moonlight - West's feature debut.
 
Here, we find ourselves inthe small town of Kalispell, in Montana. Tired Moonlight does have a narrative live, and follows a number of characters for a while, as if we were eaves dropping in their everyday struggles, relationships with other people, dreams and thoughts that influence their lives. To sum them up in a synopsys would probably be wrong, and betray the nature of the film that thrives on an emotional connection, full of nostalgia and melancholia for a simple life that seems so timeless and so rewarding within today's frantic Western society.
These emotions are accentuated by the collage and structure of the film that ties fictionional idiom with documentary in a wonderful collage. And while the film is indeed in chronological order, the structure is not straight forward. Hence, within the slow paced story, we are often interrupted by beautiful shots of Kalispell, but also a true sense of its overall atmosphere, its popular culture of barbecue get togethers and race car driving but also genuine shots of some of its whackiest and fascinating characters.
 
To an international viewer, it is almost inevitable that Tired Moonlight should be received as a film about a distant place, a film that stands proudly as originating from small town America and a wonderful yet alien sort of travelouge. Yet, this preconception is all too untrue and unjust, and seems to undermines West's very personal touch. This is a rather subjective viewpoint that includes poetry, and one that is visually striking with its Super16 warmth. But its is also just as creative and playful, and the film's "alien-like" nature is well represented in the film through the cleverness and impulsiveness of the editing as well as the use of music that is far from being representative of its region.