Someone Else in the Evening
Edgar Muniz’s “Someone Else in the Evening” is a leap forward from the first film of his I saw, “Rocks & Pebbles & Happiness.” Not that the earlier film was not good, but it felt a little rough around the edges in terms of performance and style. The new film is still a bit rough, but feels more true, more natural, even if it comes from the same DIY mood “Rocks & Pebbles” did.
Here, he’s telling the story of Eva (Laura Benson), a theatre major who’s working on a project for school. She’s put up flyers looking for non-actors. Time is running out, rehearsals aren’t going well, yet she’s constantly rewriting the script. Her adviser is worried about her, excited about the ideas but still nervous about the direction she’s headed with it. And her personal life, well, let’s just say there isn’t much to it, and she’s losing what she has.
Muniz wrote the story with Benson, and that collaboration is part of why the film works so well. It allows both actor and director to be completely in sync with one another on the way Eva is portrayed. She’s not always a likable person, but we sympathize with her completely as she’s looking for truth in her art, and in her life, which we gather was once filled with optimism and hope about love, but those feelings have turned sour. Muniz presents her from this moment of time, and that is the way to go. It’s what allows us to sympathize with her even when she’s not a sympathetic person.
Of course, that could be just me. As a creative artist myself, like Eva, I try to be experimental and true to my own worldview in my art. Sometimes doing that means a project will jump the rails, and you have to start over from scratch, but that’s one of the dirty little secrets of art- it may seem flawless and perfect when it’s done, but it’s a messy road to get there, which is what Eva is figuring out here. At the end, we feel like she’ll be able to start again, but we also feel like she’s got a ways to go to get where she wants.
