I was pleased to see another Canadian film which is difficult to pin down and embraces low-budget experimentation. Director and lead actor Zebulon Zang has created an occasionally funny, mostly sincere rumination on failure. The film is downbeat with a washed-out palette. It has a real sense of style and ambiance, and while it is obviously shot in Vancouver, there is something otherworldly about the setting which portrays the city in an oblique fashion.

Main character Greg has been doing a lot of sitting on the couch, and now lack of funds necessitates a job search. Much of the action is a series of job interviews, but we observe conversation between the other characters before Greg arrives. In the best scene he arrives for a night film shoot, not knowing what to do at all. Much of the dialogue in the scene is spoken under the hum of a generator, while most of the action in not visible.

Greg is a quiet loner, the type who gets recruited by proselytizers and pyramid schemers. He doesn’t take offence when others insult him. He tries not to fall asleep in the world’s most dingy, depressing psychiatrist’s office.

A drifting lost white male in his twenties is hardly new territory, but interest is added because attention is focused on other transient characters for much of the time. Greg attends an art show where an artist suggests that he likes it when the work is trying to be something, be about something. I think N.O.N. is doing the opposite, but I could be wrong.

I admire N.O.N.’s unapologetic low energy and lack of narrative drive. It also successfully mixes naturalism with moments of strangeness. However, as a composition it doesn’t really come together as more than a sum of its parts. The real weak link is a voice-over narration of emails which Greg is sending to an ex-girlfriend. These seem expository and over-explain his ennui.

N.O.N. (it stands for Notes on Nothing) fits within the low budget, North American indie tradition of the young and clueless. It’s a less vibrant, more boring version of Slacker, or a mumblecore film with less naturalism and more a self-consciously artistic structure.

See the trailer here.

Sunday, September 30, 2018 at 9:00 PM The Cinematheque, Vancouver

Sunday, October 7, 2018 at 8:30 PM The Cinematheque, Vancouver