The rousing Joanna Keylock plays Tina, a Bohemian young woman who has been purposely left out of her niece’s naming ceremony and she’s crashed the party to ensure that everyone notices her anger and discontent. Even the baby’s father. This sets up a rather classical indie dilemma where family must battle family and “Love and Class” ends up becoming a rather ambitious and admirably compelling little piece of work. Sadly, there is a lot that could use improving with “Love and Class.”
Particularly the audio which is a glaring caveat in an otherwise okay film. The direction is about as simplistic as you can imagine for a two character piece based around dialogue. But when you have a dialogue heavy mumblecore film centered on something of palaver, you can do nothing but hope for the best in hearing what the characters are expressing to one another. And that’s otherwise ruined in many scenes where the mom character’s lines are read from a distance so as to stifle her delivery to her daughter who is attempting to establish her importance in the family’s affairs when she’s left out of the important matters, even naming a child that could be her niece.
This also becomes sadly apparent during another crucial confrontation between Tina, and her ex boyfriend that becomes muffled and incoherent. Nonetheless, “Love and Class” is a decent Noah Baumbach clone that takes familial discord and selfish characters and pits them together in a house filled with baggage and demons that inevitably rises to the surface. As a character piece it’s a strong bit of dramatic writing, but technically, it could stand to tighten up its belt some more.
Because if the primary point of a film is the dialogue how can we respond without being able to hear any of the actual dialogue? Technically, “Love and Class” is rather incompetent with much of the dialogue impossible to hear, but dramatically this is a definite indie film to look out for with depth, conflict, and strong performances all around.