TOWHEADS

Shannon Plumb 

(USA)

As mother creator, Plumb's Penny already has superpowers, but she feels like a failure as an artist. She can't get out from under or access or show off her talent. She works against the threats of loss of identity via play. She acts out when her sense of power seems lost in the world. She counters the mundane by encountering it character-"on".

Penny faces the futility and humility of being one artist mother living in Brooklyn with her two kids and unavailable husband.  Like Gena Rowlands, she shines continuously. "I Love Penny", not “I Love Lucy”, Plumb can take any moment and turn it around to comic space and personal triumph. The normal world, the promise of the win, the championship, is the storyline. We don't have a trophy mom, but a mom who wants an artist’s trophy. Her kids are also her trophies. One of them gives her the hint to get superpowers: overcoming the fear of just doing "it". We get to see the process of Penny's development through her day, which reads as truth is stranger than fiction.  Penny's transition out of stagnation, her challenge to get into characters, her surrender into motherhood, her development as an artist, her toil, her resolution/touchdown, is nothing other than a heroine's journey.  

Stylistic details are never lost on Plumb, like leaving a big tag on her character's hipster coat. Physical gags are big, keeling over, falling on face, silent film gags, Keaton, Chaplin. Changing identity, disguise, Cindy Sherman, audacity/tryouts for your own part, in your own life, as livelihood.

Plumb's directorial approach is reminiscent of Miranda July, and the French directors Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Noemie Lvovsky in self-creating a self-consciously winning comedic edge. Like the self-styled characters in those films, Plumb's Penny is “not playing”, really not playing, yet totally playing it up.  She is subversive, both as Plumb and Penny, giving plenty of winks, with a madcap relationship to the camera. Her raison d'etre:  BEAT THE ODDS.

There is a continuous business of relating to the environment, whether a pole-dancing lounge, or her secret artist space where she locks herself in.

Anyone will break into an irrepressible grin on their face at some point whether they have children or not, and will also take profound delight in Penny's parade of spontaneously created characters. Penny overcomes the sad oppression of her situation by getting into character and transcending reality.  

Plumb terrific.