Snapshot (aka The Day After Halloween), 1979
Angela (Sigrid Thornton) is a young woman who works as a hairdresser, and finds herself chafing under the constant criticism of her overbearing mother and supposedly perfect little sister. One day a client at Angela's saloon, Madeline (Chantal Contouri), poaches Angela away to come and do some modeling for a friend of hers, Linsey (Hugh Keays-Byrne). After reluctantly agreeing to do a topless shoot, Angela finds herself the object of a lot of attention, most of it unwelcome. And things get worse as her much-older boyfriend, Daryl (Vincent Gil) steps up his campaign of stalking and harassment.
This movie
almost comes together, though I left it feeling that it was a near miss. There are some striking moments of staging and some fun character twists, but overall its peek inside the dark side of the modeling world ends up feeling like a much lesser version of something like
The Neon Demon.
I really liked Thronton's performance as Angela. She's just old enough to want her independence, but frequently in over her head. As with any young person, I found myself frequently alternating between annoyance and sympathy for the choices she makes. Angela often realizes just a beat too late what's really going on around her, and that dynamic puts her perpetually in iffy situations.
The supporting cast is also pretty good. Keays-Byrne is a lot of fun at the "artsy" photographer who can't really be bothered to reconcile his pretensions at great art with his pandering to an audience that just wants to see naked young people. In most films the character of Linsey would have been overtly predatory, but here he's made just a bit more complex because we can see the fracture between who he wants to be and the reality of the kind of work that gets him a paycheck.
Contouri also gives a good performance as the seemingly carefree Madeline. How exactly she feels about Angela seems always a bit obscured. Is she genuinely happy for her success? A bit jealous? Maybe both? The film also frequently hints that Madeline might actually be gay (or bisexual), and so she acts as both Angela's best ally and confidant and as another character who might just be out to exploit the young woman.
There are some effectively thrilling or tense sequences, such as when Angela finds herself in the home of a man who promises to help her in her career, just as long as he can take some candid shots---tasteful nudes, of course. (Apparently scenes that were cut from the film let us know that this character is supposed to be Madeline's husband, which certainly puts a really different spin on this scene!). All through the film Daryl lurks at the edges, and in one part Angela returns to the apartment to find that there's
someone sleeping in her bed. At its best, the film shows us a person who is at the mercy of so many people around her--all of whom claim to want to help or love her--that she can't tell where the real threats are coming from.
Ultimately, though, it doesn't quite hang together. The film introduces and then drops several characters. At times the glut of characters is effective because we can understand just how overwhelmed Angela is. But a lot of the time it feels more sloppy than intentional. When things move into the final act and we come to understand just who has really been behind all of the bad things happening to Angela, it feels a bit limp. Our attention has been pulled in so many directions that all I could muster was, "Oh. Yeah. I guess that makes sense."
There's definitely potential in the story, and some of the characters are a lot of fun. In the end, though, it just didn't cohere for me.
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