Love Is a Map

Love Is a Map is a decent indie movie. Shame it left almost no memorable impression on me.

Annie is a photographer. Mary was her college girlfriend. Mary’s husband, Daniel has died and Mary invites Annie up to the Catskill mountains for the weekend. Some time now having passed since her husband’s death, Mary is ready to scatter his ashes. And what better person to join her on this emotional errand than her ex? And ex who’s rather drifted out of her life since their college relationship.

It’s staggeringly unsurprising that one of the main characters in Love Is a Map is a photographer. One of the strongest elements of this film is its visuals. This is a good-looking movie. Frankly, more so than it needs to be given the subject matter. And I’m thankful for that. I complain about lots of indie movies not looking good. Love Is a Map isn’t one of them. Director Ryan Balas clearly took a lot of time during filming and in post-production to make this movie look good. Elements like colour composition and visual focus are strong within the film. Potentially less strong is any given camera movements. None of them are awful, but I do wonder if Balas has a basis in still photography and less experience in the moving image.

The story in Love Is a Map is mostly unremarkable. The dialogue and drama stands out as neither better nor poorer than other indie LGBTQ* movies. Some of the dialogue between Mary and Annie is pretty solid. And the discussion of how Mary’s relationship with Daniel was strained before his death is well-done and adds realistic depth to the story. The worst part of the writing is the voiceover. I don’t care for voiceover generally. And it’s used primarily in Love Is a Map for poetic musings. I’m pretty sure said musings are supposed to be Annie’s literal college poems. Look, shoutout to expressing yourself creatively. But the poetry of most 20 year olds isn’t nearly as deep as they think it is. It’s certainly not deep enough to have as a voiceover in an indie that’ll do anything other than make me roll my eyes.

Love Is a Map is one of those small-scale, fairly small stakes indie dramas. The purpose of these films always feels a bit like they’re meant to be more of a preview of what the cast and crew can do than anything. And that’s the case here. The film is perfectly fine overall. And everyone is trying hard. If this is supposed to be an advertisement of their talents, everyone showed up ready to be marketable. While I won’t disregard there being genuine passion to tell this story, this attitude does seem present throughout the movie. But there are a lot of worse things than a movie where everyone showed up trying to make a good impression to advance their respective careers.

Overall rating: 5.2/10

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