"Poser" a guileful, haunting debut

Poser (2022)


It can be a rare treat to discover a film that begins one way, introducing you to a subculture you could only pretend to know anything about, and then goes another way that still feels of a piece. With the cool indie “Poser,” directors Ori Negev and Noah Dixon make their guileful feature debut, basing it on what they know: the Columbus, Ohio music scene. From there, Dixon’s script makes a subtle tonal shift, beginning as an intimate, offbeat character piece that darkens and slowly becomes a more troubling psychodrama about delusion and finding one’s true identity in a small world of lo-fi artists.


Like a less-crazed, more soft-spoken, but still increasingly vampiric second cousin to Aubrey Plaza’s Ingrid from 2017’s “Ingrid Goes West,” Lennon Gates (Sylvie Mix) is a wallflower trying to make her way into the underground music scene in Columbus. Outside of working as a catering dishwasher, Lennon wants to “embrace the unconventional” and records ambient sounds digitally and then re-records them in analog form. She’s an aspiring songwriter, but she doesn’t venture out of her comfort zone to perform. When she decides to host a podcast as a music snob and books interviews with local musicians and slam poets, Lennon soon becomes infatuated with an electro-pop band called Damn the Witch Siren, led by the charismatic, boundary-pushing Bobbi Kitten (Bobbi Kitten) and her wolf mask-wearing partner Z (Z Wolf). With barely any plays on her podcast and a plagiaristic journal of song lyrics and poetry, Lennon can’t keep her lies going forever as a poser.


That the film is titled “Poser” is all you really need to know, narratively and thematically. You can call it a “Single White Female” situation, but Lennon’s obsession stems from just wanting to be a true musician with something to say, right? Making Lennon a hard-to-read cipher is intentional. We get all we need from her time alone in her apartment, doing Google searches as if she’s trying to reinvent herself or just find any personal interest. A couple of times throughout the film, Lennon even has dinner with her estranged sister (Rachel Keefe), who seems to be on better terms with their mother than Lennon. By telling her sister that she’s stepping outside her comfort zone lately, it seems like Lennon constantly needs validation when, in actuality, she can barely sell her own fraudulent self. Sylvie Mix brings a stillness, an unaffectedness, and just enough sympathy (up to a certain point) to the timid Lennon. She’s able to make Lennon’s loneliness and longing to be a part of something more relatable. 


Then there’s Bobbi Kitten, who plays a version of herself (imagine Kristen Stewart by way of Cyndi Lauper but still wholly original). Magnetically flirty and alluring, Bobbi is everything that Lennon is not: confident and using her individuality to say something and inspire her fans. It’s just too bad that Lennon can’t be as talented and uninhibited as Bobbi through sheer osmosis. A mimicry exercise that Bobbi encourages Lennon to do at a performance art exhibit might be a little on-the-nose, but it does generate a simmering, sensual tension. In another way that shows Lennon's mimicry, Bobbi tells Lennon in her interview that she loves animals except for fish, until a later scene transitions to Lennon’s fish tank. Do you think that fish will be around much longer?


Showcasing an observant compositional eye and locational texture, Negev and Dixon have a genuine feel for this specific milieu in all its seedy venues and dazed cramped-apartment hangouts. Through Lennon’s process of learning about the underground music scene, we, too, get amusing introductions to different genres of music apart from the recognizable experimental indie and alternative, like “queer death pop” and “junkyard bop.” Without any sensationalistic violence or straight-up horror, “Poser” makes a more haunting impact after being so restrained and beguiling. 


Grade: B


Oscilloscope Laboratories released “Poser” (87 min.) in select theaters on June 17, 2022.

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