The perfect of the bunch is the most recent from somebody who deserves his personal chapter in any guide concerning the historical past of Sundance, the masterful Steven Soderbergh. Thirty-five years in the past, Soderbergh brough “intercourse, lies, and videotape” to Sundance on its method to successful the Palme d’Or at Cannes and eternally impacting the impartial filmmaking scene. It’s so inspiring that Soderbergh remains to be right here making films the best way he needs to make them, enjoying with kind in recent and thrilling methods, reminding us that he’s one in every of movie’s extra exceptional storytellers.
Like so a lot of his movies, “Presence” is misleading. It’s a comparatively straightforward movie to summarize, and appears like a comparatively straightforward one to make, however there may be a lot happening beneath the floor of this intelligent style flick that I’ve been rolling it round in my head because it ended. One might virtually say it has a cinematic presence of its personal. (I’m making an attempt to keep away from calling it haunting nevertheless it’s powerful.)
Sure, Soderbergh has made a ghost story, advised from the angle of the ghost. It’s a first-entity POV movie about one thing that lives in a suburban house that’s about to be occupied by a troubled household. Shot by Soderbergh himself, after all, “Presence” is nearly like a collection of quick movies because the presence strikes by means of the home, witnessing occasions within the lifetime of its new residents with sharp cuts to black between these episodes. We witness mom Rebekah (Lucy Liu), father Chris (Chris Sullivan), and teenage youngsters Chloe (an exceptional Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday) as they transfer in. By these snippets of each day life, we study that Chloe is grieving the latest overdose lack of an in depth pal, Rebekah is dealing with some unclear authorized hassle, Chris is considering separating from her, and Tyler is type of a cocky jerk. Solely Chloe, maybe as a result of she’s so near the truth of loss of life together with her pal’s passing, can see the presence, which begins interacting together with her in surprising methods.
David Koepp’s intelligent script for “Presence” by no means forgets that it’s a ghost story, however there’s quite a bit happening on this home exterior of it being haunted. It’s one other a type of movies that means explicitly that there are much more harmful issues on this world which might be corporeal than supernatural, and it’s a movie that helps a number of readings of its title. Chris is contemplating not being “current” for his spouse, who herself isn’t actually current for her daughter. And there is a subtext that all of us have to be extra current for a complete technology of troubled youngsters to completely perceive the hazard they’re in.
