In Freddy Macdonald's eccentric, cult-chasing debut, an indomitable seamstress collides with ruthless gangsters across multiple timelines.
Sew Torn: A tense film that picks up the thread of time
Multiple alternate realities, none of which are remotely familiar with our own, coexist in “Sew Torn,” a high-concept crime farce that pits guns against haberdashery, innocence against guilt, and genre grit against fruit-loop fantasy. Even as it steals its structural conceit naked from Tom Tykwer’s 1990s trendsetter “Run Lola Run” — a film made before 24-year-old writer-director-editor Freddy Macdonald was born — this is a debut feature odd enough and unique enough to draw its own enthusiastic audience, with its mix of small-town humor, sleazy neo-noir suspense, and literally sly comedy centered on a heroine who’s like MacGyver with a sewing kit in her pocket. Some will revel in the film’s silliness, others may find it a joke stretched beyond elasticity, but plenty will be throwing Macdonald’s name at it.
Eye-catching but hardly substantial, “Sew Torn” is clearly an extension of Macdonald’s 2019 untitled effort: an already promising calling card that was acquired by Searchlight Pictures, landed the filmmaker a contract with UTA and made him the youngest director ever admitted to the AFI Conservatory. The feature-length version still feels student-y in some ways—Macdonald’s script, written with his father Fred, has a blunt tendency to rehash core themes—but stands out for its technical dexterity and poppy storytelling. This Swiss-American co-production was well-received at SXSW in the spring and recently made its international premiere at Locarno’s populist Piazza Grande program: genre-minded indie distributors will be sure to check it out.
“Choices, choices, choices,” protagonist Barbara (Eve Connolly) sings in voiceover at the film’s opening—a mantra we’ll hear repeatedly as the story recedes and branches ever further. Inviting the viewer to evaluate her own choices in the sequel, she asks, “Would you pity me or see my lack of morality?” Most viewers will probably do neither, at least not before asking a few more pressing questions. For starters, why are we in a lush Swiss Alpine valley where no one is Swiss and everyone speaks English? (Macdonald moved to Switzerland with his family as a child, which at least provides some outside context for the setting.) What year is it? What’s with the sewing? Is this movie real?
