On WFF# 4: A cat, a baby, or something violent

What is the fallout when a person’s most private moments are recorded and posted online? And can this act be even more damaging for those doing the watching than for the subjects being filmed? Afterschool (April 3, 10 p.m. and April 4, 11 p.m., Vilas Hall) attempts to answer these questions through a relentless and creepy meditation on the pains of growing up in a voyeur culture.

The movie follows a detached misfit named Rob (Ezra Miller), whose dreary existence at an East-coast boarding school gains purpose after he joins the A.V. club. His camera initially gives him the confidence to make the connections he’d been struggling to find through his computer, but after his lens inadvertently captures a tragedy, the film becomes a hall of mirrors where movies-within-movies reflect a world more nuanced and fractured than any single camera can document.

Director Antonio Campos regularly chooses to film his actors from a distance, and often keeps the sex and violence just out of frame. This first leads to a detached feeling mimicking Rob’s reality, then later, a more visceral experience where audience members' first impulse is to crane their necks, followed by the squeamish realization that what they’re trying to look at is probably better left unseen.

Campos extends this idea in a scene where Rob’s school psychologist asks him what kind of videos he likes. Rob replies: “I like little clips of things that seem real. A cat, or a baby, or something violent.” The fact that Rob equates violence with a cat or baby says less about his character, and more about how the timeless riddle of where we fit in is becoming harder and harder to answer. And how can it not, when the realities we can choose to inhabit continually multiply, and are inherently flawed?

For more Wisconsin Film Festival previews, please see the On WFF archive.