Stanley, a naive 1st year drama student meets Isolde and begins a sweet, first love affair. Goaded by Hannah, the charismatic, domineering Head of Acting, Stanley uncovers a talent and ambition he didn't know he had. When his group hits on a sex scandal that involves Isolde's tennis prodigy sister as fertile material for their end-of-year show, Stanley finds himeself profoundly torn. The Rehearsal, directed by Alison Maclean and written by Maclean and author Emily Perkins, is based on the novel by Man Booker award-winner Eleanor Catton.
Your mileage may vary, but for myself "The Rehearsal" delivers a good hour and a half of engagement and intrigue only to top it off with a cherry that left me asking "Really?"
The film is enlivened by an uncommon depiction of young people behaving and interacting in a believable manner, and confidently builds to a (literal) showstopper ending that's both rousing and hard-won.
"The Rehearsal" can't help but follow its characters as their actions become more irrational and occasionally overwrought, but like them it's redeemed by a simple yet bravura closing sequence
The diffuse nature of the narrative, the way in which the film sometimes seems reluctant to focus, makes it something other than the simpler, more direct, more obvious movie that it might have been-a spectacle of the pedagogic urge to destroy.
Maclean asks tough questions about the craft of acting and the behavior of administrators who would rather collect donor checks for new facilities than do the right thing for their students.
Such a hodgepodge of arthouse references, arch distancing effects, and emotionally vacant wide-screen compositions that one could easily mistake it for an awkward debut film.
It is a film that will leave people talking, I have no doubt. Hopefully one of those discussions is about why it took Alison Maclean so long to make another film. 18 years is too long to wait.
