From Omeleto.

An actor readies to go on stage.

MATINEE is used with permission from John Brugal. Learn more at https://johnbrugal.com.

Tommy is an actor readying himself to take the stage. Dressed as a pirate, he’s warming up and psyching himself up before he goes on. He’s excited and nervous as if this is a make-or-break role for him. But as it turns out, Tommy is getting ready to perform…in a high school musical. He’s doing the role as a last-minute favor to his friend, the head of the theater department at a Los Angeles school.

When his friend Rafe, a successful, charismatic actor, comes by to bring Tommy a "tear stick," he tries to dissuade Tommy from going on with the show. The high school is full of industry types; the kids are good actors; and Tommy might risk his fledging but struggling career as a TV actor if he turns in a substandard performance. He must decide between preserving his career momentum and letting down his friend — or going on with the show.

Directed and written by John Brugal, this showbiz comedy explores its main character’s conflict between creativity and industry as he tries to unravel the knot of his passion, ego and deepest fears about himself. Filmed in luminous black-and-white and filmed with swooping camera movements and striking framings, the narrative is a kind of emotional Mobius strip: it begins as a nimble, off-beat comedy before it swirls into an almost absurd descent into Tommy’s fears and anxieties about success and the future.

Starting as Tommy warms up alone before the performance, we’re dropped as viewers into a private place of play with Tommy dressed as a pirate, reciting lines and doing warmups. It’s awkward and silly, but Tommy is serious about his craft. When he gets the 15-minute notice from the stage manager and runs to get his tear stick from Rafe, we get a tour of the unique, almost carnivalesque atmosphere of the backstage environment. But as Tommy wends his way to his friend, the storytelling deftly reveals that the circumstances differ from what we thought: it’s not a professional performance, but a high school one.

This being Los Angeles, though, even a high school musical is high stakes, with the audience of parents who work in the entertainment industry as agents, casting directors and the like. Even Tommy’s co-stars are also seasoned industry veterans. Tommy is as well, but the layered, complex writing slowly reveals his career is in a precarious position, and his conversation makes clear that appearing in the music as a favor may humiliate him further.

The storytelling uses its reveals not to generate tension and suspense primarily, but as a way to dig deep into Tommy’s character, as he confronts the gap between his hopes and dreams and his reality and wonders what got lost along the way. Actor Jack Falahee’s performance similarly traverses wide emotional terrain, capturing the earnestness of being an actor while also revealing Tommy’s vulnerabilities, fears and anxieties. He’s torn between his love of performing and his friendship and the professional pressures represented by Rafe, a dilemma deepened by the more expressionistic, emotional storytelling that the film shifts into as Tommy confronts himself.

MATINEE ends with Tommy realizing something fundamental about himself. It’s not a concise, simple emotional insight, but instead a re-opening of a dimension within himself that he’s forgotten in the hustle and bustle of making it. In the end, he finds himself again — and remembers just why he loves to begin with.