{"id":26460,"date":"2017-09-29T20:41:15","date_gmt":"2017-09-30T00:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=26460"},"modified":"2017-09-29T20:44:17","modified_gmt":"2017-09-30T00:44:17","slug":"imitation-girl-2017-philadelphia-unnamed-film-festival-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/29\/imitation-girl-2017-philadelphia-unnamed-film-festival-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Imitation Girl (2017) [Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival 2017]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A being falls to Earth and copies the first image of a human it sees.\u00a0 Living as this girl, she starts learning about family, love, and life.\u00a0 As she does, the girl she has copied lives her life in New York, working in the adult industries and slowly losing herself.\u00a0 As their lives evolve, their meeting is unavoidable and may bring them more than they expect.<\/p>\n

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Written and directed by Natasha Kermani, Imitation Girl is a film about life, what makes life worth living, and how each person\u2019s life can be widely different based on decisions and circumstances.\u00a0 The film does this in a beautiful, almost lyrical way, going back and forth between both versions of this girl.\u00a0 The newer one, the alien life form is innocent like a young child and opened to happiness and beauty in life.\u00a0 The human girl has lost her illusions, her dreams, and is just going through life doing what she can to survive and try to find a connection.\u00a0 One just lets things happen naturally while the other all she can to get things to go better for herself, yet the first gets the easiest happiness while the second not so much.\u00a0 The film is all about the ways life can differ, how these ways affect people long and short terms.\u00a0 The exploration of life here and what makes one happy is what makes the film so fascinating and not the alien landing on her or the bits of porn shoots involved.<\/p>\n

Playing both girls, actress Lauren Ashley Carter gives a nuanced pair of performances.\u00a0 She manages to create two completely different characters in one movie, with clear personalities and mannerisms for each.\u00a0 Her performances ground the film in two ways, making the impact of the story and themes felt much more strongly.\u00a0 Her performances carry the film and the themes while also giving insight in both characters in each their own way.\u00a0 She plays innocent, vulnerable as well as world-weary, hard-living perfectly here.\u00a0 Other stand-out performances are Neimah Djourabchi as Saghi, the man who takes the imitation girl in and helps her discover life.\u00a0 His presence is strong, yet subtle, he teaches her softly, without pushing or probing.\u00a0 He shows that part of society will just accept you as you are.\u00a0 Playing his sister Khahar is Sanam Erfani who gives is subtle, strong performance.\u00a0 She gives the imitation girl an example of a strong, powerful, yet caring woman who takes care of those around her while being her own self.\u00a0 Erfani works this character beautifully and is mesmerizing as she does so.\u00a0 A few others also give very interesting performances with no one being off or off-putting, giving the film a strong ensemble.<\/p>\n

The film establishes two different looks for each of the girls.\u00a0 The nice south western countryside gives a good background for the innocence, the new growth, while the city, New York City in particular, gives a grimy yet hopeful background for the porn actress wanting out.\u00a0 The film works both locations at the same time, in contrast but also as complement to each other.\u00a0 The cinematography by Travis Tips gives both of these locations their own look while making them complement each other.\u00a0 His work is masterful and gives both locations their own identity and beauty.<\/p>\n

Imitation Girl shows a dichotomy between the innocent girl and the porn star that she is emulating in terms of looks.\u00a0 It also is a strong take on how the world around us and circumstances can change how one evolved while dealing with duality and becoming one with one\u2019s self.\u00a0 The film has many strong themes that come across easily through a sad and melancholy story on one side and an innocent and open story on the other.\u00a0 The film takes its time to establish the characters and how life has impacted them, it shows more without dictating any of it, and has a big impact this way.\u00a0 The ending is interesting and opened to interpretation, which works perfectly for this film that does not tell which life is better, just that everyone has options and each option will lead to a different ending, but not a different person.<\/p>\n

Imitation Girl is playing at the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival on Thursday, September 28th. Tickets can be purchased at https:\/\/filmfreeway.com\/festival\/PhiladelphiaUnnamedFilmFestival\/tickets<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A being falls to Earth and copies the first image of a human it sees.\u00a0 Living as this girl, she starts learning about family, love, and life.\u00a0 As she does, the girl she has copied lives her life in New York, working in the adult industries and slowly losing herself.\u00a0 As their lives evolve, their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[88,302,1401,906],"class_list":["post-26460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-aliens","tag-drama","tag-lgbt","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26462,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26460\/revisions\/26462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}