Tell Me You Love Me
By Trevor Denning (@BookstoreThor)
Sometimes, you have to make a mess in order to clean it up.
That’s what Daniel finds at the end of Tell Me You Love Me, the latest microbudget movie from folk filmmaker and star Dan Lotz. Saying so isn’t a spoiler. It’s the true trajectory of every honest story, and above all else Tell Me You Love Me is honest. Uncomfortably so. Perhaps in an era of lies, truth has become unfamiliar, like an old lover who isn’t exactly what we remember.
And it’s appropriate, as this is a story of estranged lovers. One year ago Daniel and Elizabeth (Elizabeth Lotz) met while on vacation and had a moment. In an attempt to recreate that time Dan stalks her social media and follows her back to where it all began. When she realizes that this isn’t fate repeating itself and that he lied to her, she’s understandably upset. Yet, perhaps against her better judgment, she allows him back into her life.
Dan is so obsessed with having everything just as it was that he’s willing to lie and deceive, belittle and nag. The hotel manager remembers him and likes him enough to give him a free upgrade. Dan cusses him out for not giving him the exact same room as last year. Is that who Dan was a year ago? Who he really is and always has been?
Dan Lotz
Like many of these smaller films, watching feels intimate. We’re closer to these people than they are to one another, in ways you don’t get in a blockbuster. As their time together plays out we, and Elizabeth, watch as the glamor fades and the dross rises to the top. It’s a simple fact of Story that the love interest forces the hero to prove who he really is. It’s a complex fact of life that most people aren’t heroic.
Can Dan and Elizabether accept that they are both broken, imperfect, people? True, their first encounter may have been Hollywood perfect. Sometimes we have those moments in life. They never last. Inevitably, reality comes crashing down and all that’s left is the truth. I won’t spoil the ending and simply promise that there is an ending (not always a guarantee in arthouse oriented films), and it squares with what we all know is true.
Finding the parameters of a story can be a tricky thing. Lotz nails it here, starting at the beginning and stopping when it’s finished. You can know the Hero’s Journey backwards and forwards, but those are the beats that must be hit. Within the run time of a network TV show, Lotz manages to tell more story with greater artistry than many feature films. As deeply personal as the story is, Lotz is at its mercy and never allows it become self-indulgent.
Stories like this have to be made outside the studio system, because they are beyond their reach. Something this small draws meaning from its size and scope and requires as few hands as possible. Money can’t buy meaning.
