An interesting film debut that clumsily finds its feet without unfortunately managing to find its root.
First time director Darren Paul Fisher surprises with Frequencies, although unequal, the film is rather agreeable to watch if you can get past the attempts to take clever and, at times, too-serious routes its narration does. Frequencies starts in medias res. The viewer is given a too-familiar yet quirky world, where children are now defined in terms of frequencies. Little is given at first to explain what they are, but as the narration unfolds, it becomes clear that frequencies refers to luck. The higher frequencies you have, the luckiest you will be in life, and vise-versa.
The narration focuses on Marie, a high frequencies, and Zak a low frequencies. Because of the opposite force of their nature, they cannot meet for more than one minute without the elements to rebel towards this encounter. The film is structured in patterns, and we follow their yearly meeting, which works as an experiment engaged by Marie to evaluate how both their frequencies works. Of course one of them develops a romantic attraction to the other one and the narration evolves towards finding a solution for both to be together.
The film is divided in chapters around the characters, each of them offering a version of the events, smart repetitions that organize the narration around patterns. The premise of the film gets deeper as its developing, but however interesting the idea might have been at the beginning, the cinematography fails to create the emotional involvement it asks in order to fully impact the viewer. The resolution at the end seems empty and, almost too-serious for its own good. Hesitating between a beautifully cold aesthetics and the supposedly comforting warmth of the music element of its narration, the film clumsily finds its feet without unfortunately managing to find its root. As a first feature however, the film is promising for Darren Paul Fisher, providing his next feature manages to find the strong cinematographic identity his ideas asks for.
Frequencies (2013), directed by Darren Paul Fisher, is distributed in the UK on DVD by Signature Entertainment, Certificate 12.
