Institute History
Description
Formally stunning and compositionally complex, Sugar, Reynold Reynolds's and Patrick Jolley's first feature, is a striking postnarrative, Gothic horror masterpiece. When a woman rents a miserably tiny room, she finds mountains of belongings from the previous tenant, "Anthony," as well as messages on the machine from the landlord, his mother, and a calm, threatening Irishman. As she cleans up the place, she begins to experience uncanny visions, nightmares, and the feeling that Anthony is much closer than she imagined.
Samara Golden gives a brilliantly unsettling performance; with no one to talk to, her sanity is eroded by a confrontation with her own body in this confining space, the size of a postage stamp. The mise-en-scène is like a filthy fishbowl; a fourth wall of grimy shop glass catches graffiti and backlights the woman, while the omnipresent shadows of street figures begging, pissing, and quarreling heighten the visual distance of this odd girl-woman from the world.
Terror haunts her sweaty-summer mind as she ritualistically cleans the room, strips to old-fashioned bra and panties, climbs in the fridge to cool down, and makes pudding. Sugar is a terrifying, intoxicating cockroach-eye view into the sweet surrender of hysteria and comforts of urban claustrophobia that will have you crawling out of your skin.