Director: Christopher Matthew Spencer
Writer: Christopher Matthew Spencer
Cast: Evan Jachelski, Ramiro Leal, Olivia Pruitt
Running time: 8mins
Film festivals are expensive – and so they often struggle to break even, let alone make a profit. With submission fees often posing as the only dependable source of revenue that many festivals have access to, that can make granting waivers difficult.
Stories told by artists working on a shoe-string budget, or who are hit by censorship, or subjected to international sanctions, still need a platform, though. That’s why Indy Film Library’s Saturday Matinees series has returned for a sixth season.
Over this most recent run of matinees, IFL will be showcasing work from places where monetary and legal constraints have prevented the free and easy communication of their artistic or political visions.
The second film in our free-to-view programme is US-based filmmaker Christopher Matthew Spencer’s The Red Market. Taking its cues from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life and Repo! The Genetic Opera, this dystopian sci-fi unfolds in an uncomfortably familiar future, in which US citizens look to pay off their debts, by selling their organs to private medical clinics.
At its best, the movie is amusing and subversive, with a neat eye for details. The grimly comedic name of the ‘Murry Opportunity Bank’, speaks of a modern capitalistic order framed entirely through freedom and individual choice, but ultimately underscored by an unspoken threat – the choice to be exploited, or to die. And often that choice is not even exactly a dichotomy – and in this case, it seems that protagonist Zephyr Sage (Evan Jachelski) might find that out the hard way.
At his intake meeting, to verify the quality of his liver, two nurses poke and prod him unceremoniously. But their demeanour changes dramatically when one of the surgeons at the ‘opportunity bank’ bursts in declaring he needs urgent help with another unfortunate client – presumably bleeding out in the next room. As soon as he notices his nurses are in the presence of the next donor/victim at his disposal, his face forcefully re-arranges itself into a smile (actor Ramiro Leal does a wonderful job of being pleasantly unpleasant here), while the two nurses also being grinning and nonchalantly caressing Sage’s shoulder. Nothing to see here, nobody is dying in the next room. Now gi’s yer liver!
Considering this is writer-director Spencer’s first film, a lot of technical prowess has gone into constructing this eery, dark comedy. The film looks reassuringly expensive – the colours pop, while Shile Yang and David Kirk’s cinematography make the most of every opportunity to make the imagery as innovative and eye-catching as possible. There are some issues, though, which may or may not have resulted from that seemingly costly veneer.
At times, it feels like this was an ambitious idea for a feature-length project that simply ran out of money. While to an extent it still works as a ‘come in late, get out early’ short film, Spencer slightly undermines this with the decision to fill in the final scene with an artist’s rendition of what might have happened. It would have been more powerful (and maybe less patronising to the audience) to allow us to imagine our own conclusions – especially given the chilling way his earlier interaction with a doctor at the clinic suggests operations here seldom go well.
At the same time, there are times when a little more detail is required to explain what is going on during the stretch of story we are being exposed to. Sometimes Spencer gets this right. For example, when Hyiancinth (Olivia Pruitt, a loan shark, phones our protagonist to menace him about some gambling debts, it’s a great way of getting us up to speed with why anyone would be keen to do business with this clinic.
But while he is on the call, Sage shuffles over to a whiteboard with his name and statistics on it, to deliberately erase some aspect of his data. Exactly why remains a mystery – it seems, after all, that he is in good health anyway, so his organs will be of use. A little ADR inserting a small piece of exposition while the camera looks elsewhere might not look all that polished, but it would be a forgivable piece of trickery if it could help us engage with the story on clearer terms.
Even so, this is a valiant first effort for Spencer and his team, with plenty to draw on for future projects. And as the cost of living continues to ramp up for citizens around the world, while health systems are ravaged by private interests – whoever is in charge – The Red Market makes an entertaining stab at social satire, which threatens to become increasingly relevant in the years to come.
As with all our previous Saturday Matinees, the film will be available to view for free in full from 09:00 UK time on Saturday the 18th of January, until the end of the weekend, via our Saturday Matinees theatre page. You can give it your own score out of five there! As the film is still trying to gain access to other festivals, the page is password protected. Use the code IFLMATINEE25 to access the film.