Long Lost

     Diane Bell has written and directed three films.  From what I've seen in her second, Bleeding Heart (2015), I'd like to see the other two.
     Jessica Biel plays May, a yoga instructor very much into Eastern philosophies and religions, at least in the surface ways of finding inner peace and saying Namaste a lot.  Her boyfriend, Dex (Edi Gathegi) also teaches these subjects, making a decent living at it, but overly concerned with money in May's view.
     May never knew her mother, was adopted by a rich woman (Kate Burton).  After an investigation, May finds her long lost half-sister (Zosia Mamet), ten years younger and going by the name, Shiva.  Shiva gives sexual massages for a living.  Her boyfriend Cody (Joe Anderson) rustles clients for her to please.  She's not tranquil like May, doesn't give two shits about spirituality.  
     After the sisters meet, May takes her to her adoptive mother's house in a gated community in Santa Barbara.  The idea is to get Shiva away from hot-headed Cody for a while.  The mother feels threatened by May's revelation of having a sister.  She dislikes the look of Shiva right away, treats her like mud on the soles of her pumps.  Leaving for LA, she nonetheless lets May stay the night in her home along with Shiva.
     The sisters have a great time, hanging out by the pool, talking, smoking pot, drinking good liquor. May begins to discover a chaotic whirl of experience as represented by this twenty-four year old whose life has been rough where May's time on Earth has been smooth.
     Shiva's life in LA with Cody infects May's peace of mind.  May's boyfriend Dex finds her distancing herself from him after he takes judgmental potshots at her sister for being a "whore."  May corrects him, saying "sex worker."
     Proper semantics the rift between them does not mend, at least for a while.
     The sisters get increasingly close, with mounting trouble.  Cody's a fucking asshole.  Cody has a forty-five caliber pistol.  Cody turns up at inopportune times in the film.  Dex, being somewhat dense, thinks Cody's a normal person, at first.  The viewer, close to May's perspectives throughout the film, has a better understanding of her journey as she explores the undersides of life, the muck, so to speak, from which the lotus grows.
     It doesn't end well.  Contention, violence, betrayal, but also greater understanding as May learns, through suffering linked with compassion, about actual wisdom gained from real experience rather than from knowing the words and rituals of a discipleship in the lucrative business of teaching personal growth--the kind of thing Dex is into.
     The movie's moodiness, spare musical score, the stillness of Jessica Biel's interesting face, the sudden moments of alarming action, the 1965 Rambler she drives, all add up to a peculiar suspense thriller with fascinating details to ponder as the film unfolds without a hurry, seeming like a Lifetime TV movie at first, but changing quickly into something quite artful, beautiful, and disturbing.
     Highly recommended, I watched it on Amazon Prime.

                                                                                  Vic Neptune

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