Where the homeless quote Milton

Molly Ryman & Robert Evans in …Around (click to enlarge)

I’m thirty years older than the film school characters in ...Around (2008), but the connection seems clear. Forget my gray hair, lined skin and failing eyesight: one look in the mirror, and I still see traces of the fear that motivates young idealists. And in my mind I’ll always suffer the adolescent cluelessness and hunger dogging the film’s principal screw-up, a noncommittal bridge-burner named Doyle Simms. Kudos to Robert W. Evans for his excellent performance here, as he maneuvers through some very real psychological, academic and familial booby traps, the kind that often snare us when we’re Simms’s age, that magic time when he and I (and, in all likelihood, you) thought we had it all together while the glory of youth slipped by our notice.

    Its title reflecting that emotional cul-de-sac, ...Around was written, produced, edited and directed by twenty-five-year-old David Spaltro. Working from autobiographic material, he’s done wonders on a miniscule budget (reportedly $200,000), a combination of script savvy and fortuitous casting. Of the latter, there’s Ron Brice, memorable as an existential street dweller — Spaltro is wise not to underline the irony of an unemployed and homeless intellectual; Berenice Mosca is touching as Simm’s confused mother, stifled by her own misdirected sensibilities; and Molly Ryman is every hetero boy’s fantasy, the creamy insecure blonde willing to wait out her man’s frustrating odyssey.

    Simms is an aspiring filmmaker with no story to tell — at least none he’s conscious of — depleted of funds, disconnected from family and too dumb to kiss the eager girl. (Metaphorically impotent, he’s going without coming.) Sleeping on the streets, working temporary jobs, maxing out credit cards for tuition, scrounging cash and food, he’s compelled without knowing why. Despite all this tragedy at hand, ...Around is ostensibly a comedy, but a human one, where foibles and pitfalls lead down a road to maturity. Along the way, Spaltro reaches in many directions without tidy endings. Which makes ...Around honest, searching and true, a film only as flawed as reality.

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