Black Conflux
**Seen at the 2020 Atlanta Film Festival.
There are two stories taking place in “Black Conflux.” It’s almost as if we are watching two different movies, one which is about a 15-year-old student trying to navigate her way through growing up, and interest in boys, and the other about an older man who is awkward around actual women, but has an active fantasy life where women adore him. How they end up in the same car together at the end is a story for the film to tell you- same with how that car ride ends up.
For much of its 100-minute running time, Nicole Dorsey’s film does not have much of a connection between Jackie, the 15-year-old played by Ella Ballentine, and Dennis, the warehouse worker played by Ryan McDonald. Their lives go on without much knowledge of the other except noticing one or the other from a distance, and then moving on. When we first see her, Jackie is auditioning for her school’s choir. She seems like a good student, and has some friends she hangs out with, but her home life is marred by tragedy, and living with her alcoholic aunt does not do much to help. There are certainly cracks in her image that we start to see, but a lot of what we witness out of her is a some relatively minor teenage rebellion. When she meets a boy (Luke Bilyk) at a party, things get a bit more complicated, but at first, Donovan seems to be a good grounding individual for her.
Dennis is seen at his job, and living in his sister’s house. He doesn’t have much of a life, and his co-workers try to get him out to meet someone. It’s not until about the midway point of the film that we see how much different his inner life is, as he imagines he’s surrounded by adoring women, and one, in particular, seems to be his passenger in the car. With regular people, he is very awkward, even when he is around his sister. People try to set him up, but the way he talks about a woman he supposedly met, but only saw at a distance, he’s not really in a position to be in a relationship, either. Is that how he really views women, or is it just that he doesn’t know how to approach women?
Each story holds our interest because each character is empathetic and interesting in their own right. If the film has an issue, it’s with the structure of Dorsey’s screenplay that keeps them apart from one another for so much of the film. That does make the impact of the final scene hit stronger, as these two characters seem to end up in similar emotional places by the end of the film, and the performances by Ballentine and McDonald have led us to this moment, and this scene is enough to recommend it on by itself. It’s a moment you won’t forget.
