It can actually be frustrating to Simon (Tristan Turner) to see how easily art can happen, walking down the street in “The Travel Companion” after a shoot for his documentary and he and Beatrice (Naomi Asa), his boom operator for the day, are approached by a stranger who sees their cameras and asks if they could take a picture of him popping a champagne bottle in front of a car. He’d take it himself on his iPhone, but that just wouldn’t capture the excitement around the occasion. Simon and Beatrice oblige and it’s exhilarating in the moment that the two filmmakers can feel as if they’re really capturing something about life as it’s happening, but at least for Simon, it is underlined by the depressing thought that he’s spent yers on a project that no longer gives him the same electrical charge, bound to see it through after investing so many years into it already and feels more as a concept that he pitches to others than any real object.
It turns out there is a real movie in Simon’s struggles, just not necessarily in the one he’s making himself as Alex Mallis and Travis Wood surely channel some of their own frustrations about the long, tedious process involved in getting any production off the ground into a gently amusing satire about coping with the frustrating waiting game that usually eludes detection as a part of filmmaking. Simon may actually be a little too patient, first introduced as part of a group of filmmakers invited to speak at a post-screening Q & A of their shorts, only by the time the mic gets to him, the theater needs to be cleared out for the next show. His luck doesn’t exactly improve upon meeting Beatrice afterwards as she joins Simon and his roommate Bruce (Anthony Oberbeck) for a drink and the two of them hit it off by the end of the night, putting him in the unfortunate position of potentially becoming a third wheel. It’s a spot Simon wouldn’t mind, except for the fact that Bruce’s work in the travel industry affords him and one guest unlimited flights on an annual basis and the possibility that Beatrice could be boarding those planes instead of him drives him crazy.
Still, as catastrophic as losing his travel privileges may seem to Simon, Mallis, Wood and co-writer Weston Auburn ask what’s he really done by having such wherewithal to go anywhere on a whim, ironically working on a feature-length project about crossing borders around the world and can’t trespass the ones he’s created for himself in his mind. Allusions to the grind of attracting creative and financial support have clearly slowed momentum, but beyond how much that has gotten inside Simon’s head, you’re also privy to how much he gets in his own way as he talks up the film to others, throwing out so many descriptors and buzzwords that he no longer knows what it is anymore. Rather than extending his reach by networking with a bunch of festival travel, the end result looks more like delay tactics to avoid actually working on the film.
“The Travel Companion” inevitably runs the risk of being a little too insular when Mallis and Wood slow down Simon’s filmmaking hustle to show it in such granular detail, but it’s a meticulousness that adds up at the end when the applause may be for what’s on screen, but the film strongly suggests what the filmmaker experiences is an appreciation for what was endured off of it that an audience may never know. Filmmaking isn’t easy, but in that poignant moment, you could be fooled into thinking it can be effortless.
“The Travel Companion” will screen again at the Tribeca Festival on June 6th at 9:15 pm at the AMC 19th St. East 6, June 11th at 3:15 pm at the Village East, June 14th at 5:15 pm at the Village East and June 15th at noon at the AMC 19th St. East 6.