Let’s Meet Halfway

Let’s Meet Halfway is a perfectly technically proficient film. Its scope and budget already limited, the film also shot during lockdown. I am impressed with how much effort the film takes in making itself look good and polished despite these limitations. Film’s still sort of boring though.

The title card tells you it’s 1995. Which is helpful because the film otherwise can’t style itself in a way that reads 90’s without them needing to tell you. Charlie and Avery met in university and now try and make it work as a long distance couple. Each month, they meet in a small town halfway between their locations. The film follows these monthly meetings. Issues such as conflicting future plans, hesitation to commit and complex relationships with parents all provide obstacles for Charlie and Avery. Plus, the simple fact of distance and infrequent meetings means much happens in both women’s lives without their partner.

Because of the time it was shot, Let’s Meet Halfway has very few people onscreen. Every space Charlie and Avery occupy is near-empty aside from them. This can be distracting. It takes away from the 90’s atmosphere as it so clearly reads as Covid times. Though intentionally or otherwise, this emptiness adds something to the relationship. Charlie and Avery aren’t out to anyone in their lives. Their relationship is something really only the two of them even know about. Without connections to others, without others even having knowledge of their love, it’s hard for Charlie and Avery to have deep roots to each other. And it also makes it easier to disentangle their lives if one of them wants to leave.

Low budget and pandemic-era filming mean this is a film that’s run on dialogue and character. It’s a mixed bag in that respect. From a screenwriting prospective, the film generally does well in having scenes have a purpose and an individual beginning/middle end. If this was a film school project, it would show understanding of the building blocks of story. Though naturally, some scenes are better than others. There’s a few scenes that are probably worth having on both the writer and actor’s reels to show what they can do. But there’s as many scenes that while technically sound, don’t exactly inspire anything in me as a viewer.

The film also takes the time and effort to do what it can to make this a well-shot movie. Again, I can see all the technically sound attention to detail here. The shots are often pretty. Use of both natural and artificial light is well-calibrated. And there’s a few well-blocked, standout shots to use as promo stills. Again, if this were a student project, it gets a comfortably passing grade for showing competence overall in its camerawork.

It’s easiest to think of Let’s Meet Halfway as some sort of student film. Grading it on that curve allows for a more positive take on this very small indie. Because if I grade it against cinema overall, even just sapphic cinema, it’s just so small that it almost immediately gets lost in the shuffle. Let’s Meet Halfway is a technically proficient small indie that does the damnedest with what little it had to work with. I’m going for forget all about it by the end of this week.

Overall rating: 5.4/10

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