Barbara (Eve Connolly) learns of the event that’s going to change her life in a very straightforward way in “Sew Torn,” on the road back home to her sewing business where in short order, she comes across two crashed motorcycles, two spilled bags of cocaine, a pair of guns and eventually the two guys who must’ve flown off the bikes and look alive, but barely. Looking for a change of scenery after her mother’s passing, there are things Barbara thinks she could do with the ill gotten goods, there’s some slight moral pull to rescue the fallen even if it means putting herself in harm’s way and there’s also the obvious option of simply driving past all of it, paying it no mind, but as she is apt to repeat “Choices, choices, choices” throughout Freddy MacDonald’s knotty drama, knowing how things can end can be just as paralyzing as not knowing where to start.
Based on MacDonald’s short film of the same name, the director makes good on the promise of its premise of a drug deal gone awry, expanding beyond the mental mouse trap that the seamstress finds herself to consider how hard it is to make any life-altering decisions. It’s telling when Barbara comes across the would-be drug runners Beck (Thomas Douglas) and Joshua (Calum Worthy), her first instinct is to absolve herself of any responsibility for their fate while stringing up their guns to give each an equal chance at taking each other’s lives. All the ingenuity and energy in setting up the Rube Goldberg-esque scenario could surely put to more personally productive ends if she could just pick a path and MacDonald gives her three options when the film resets upon her literally following the thread to its logical conclusion, first learning that Joshua is the son of a feared drug dealer (John Lynch) who Beck warns her not to evade when she tries to handle the situation on her own, subsequently creating a bind for herself when she decides to enlist the help of local law enforcement, amusingly played by the 88-year-old K Callan, who serves the role of nearly every city official in the tiny town they inhabit, and ultimately seeing how things would play out if she just decides to leave with no strings attached, even if anyone should know better, it’s Barbara.
Both Joel Coen and Jared Hess are listed in the special thanks section, and they are clearly the kind of company MacDonald would like to be in when “Sew Torn” takes place in a universe entirely of its own creation, set somewhere in central Europe (shot in Switzerland, but suggested to be a fictional town in Austria called Sharraü) where nearly everyone has an American accent and Barbara’s mother once specialized in hand-stitching replicas of family photos that were hooked up with audio recordings of the people in them. These things only minimally come into play besides dazzling the eye, which costume and production designer Vivianne Rapp clearly recognized for the opportunity that it was, but “Sew Torn” is able to turn its quirkiness towards meaningful ends when Barbara’s sewing skills become the basis for a number of energetic set-pieces where she knits her way out of sticky situations and MacDonald has a real gift for comic action sequences and the time-jumping becomes less of a narrative device than the point of it as both she and Joshua fear stepping out of their parents’ shadows by coming to any conclusion by themselves.
Like Barbara, there is a single-mindedness to MacDonald’s approach where a determination to get to the end goal can overlook nuance. Lynch, Callan and Caroline Goodall, as a bride-to-be who is threatened with being deserted at the altar by Barbara in a fashion emergency, all play their roles at slightly different tonal registers, and a choppy editing style that works well when Barbara’s in her groove is less suited for the film’s more circumspect scenes. Yet unlike its lead, the director isn’t afraid to make bold choices right from the jump and “Sew Torn” is admirable for its verve, too busy leaving audiences in stitches to take notice of the few seams it has.
“Sew Torn” will screen once more at SXSW on March 16th at 9:30 pm at the Alamo Lamar 9.
