In “Sew Torn,” a high-concept crime comedy that mixes guns and crafts, innocence and guilt, courage and imagination, the film is a clear ripoff of Tom Tykwer’s 1990s “Run Lola Run” — a film that was made before the 24-year-old writer, director and editor Freddie MacDonald was even born — but this first film is just weird and distinctive enough to attract a loyal following, with its mix of small-town adventures, ugly neo-noir tension and literally sly comedy centered around a MacGyver-like heroine with a sewing kit in her pocket. Some may be wowed by the film’s silliness, others may find it an over-the-top joke, but it will have plenty of people hanging on to MacDonald’s name.
A striking if not substantial film, “Sew Torn” is a clear expansion of Macdonald’s 2019 short of the same name: an already auspicious calling card that got the director acquired by Searchlight Pictures, signed with UTA, and made him the youngest director ever accepted into the American Film Institute. The feature-length version still feels student-like in some ways—Macdonald’s screenplay, written with his father Fred, tends to talk and repeat its basic thematic points—but it’s technically nimble and narratively lively. This Swiss-American co-production was already well-received at SXSW in the spring, and had its international premiere at Locarno’s popular Piazza Grande: genre-bending indie distributors will surely appreciate it.
“Choices, choices, choices,” the film’s heroine Barbara (Eve Connolly) sings in her own voice at the beginning of the film—a mantra we’ll hear several more times as the narrative loops back and forth. Barbara invites the viewer to judge her own choices in the story that follows: “Do you pity me or do you see my lack of morality?” Most viewers will likely do neither, at least not before asking several more pressing questions. For starters, why are we in a green Swiss valley where there are no Swiss and everyone speaks English? (MacDonald moved to Switzerland with his family as a child, which at least provides some outside context.) What year exactly? What’s the seamstress’s story? Is this film real?
Yes and no, it turns out—though Barbara, with her proper dignified demeanor, takes things very seriously. An orphan and alone in the world, she has tried to keep her late mother’s traveling tailoring business afloat, in accordance with her dying mother’s wishes, but she is finally on the verge of giving up and closing the business. (It turns out that in the fictional Swiss countryside, there is little demand for the company’s signature service: cross-embroidered “talking pictures” with built-in sound. What a world!). The only remaining client, the haughty middle-aged bride Grace (Caroline Goodall), hires her to alter her wedding dress, but when a crucial button flies off—and Barbara throws it away in a fit of rage—the seamstress has to drive across the valley again to fetch a replacement.
The story begins to unravel as Barbara stumbles upon an unplanned accident and crime scene on a quiet detour: two seriously injured bikers in the middle of the road, a torn stash of cocaine strewn across the asphalt, and a bag full of cash lying just out of reach of any bikers. Surveying the damage, Barbara concludes that she can do one of three things: steal the loot, call the police, or simply drive off. “Sew Torn” proceeds to methodically recount the ramifications of each choice: the outcomes vary, though each brings her into contact with the psychopathic Hudson gang (John Lynch) and the ostensibly elderly police chief, Mrs. Engle (K. Kalin), and puts her in a bind from which only her skilled seamstress can extricate her.
It's these insanely choreographed scenes that prove the film's ultimate absurdity and power. The reason for his existence, As Barbara winds spools of thread into intricate bobbins, shackles and cat's cradle traps – at one point she darts through a tangled maze of cotton in a stunningly choreographed combat dance, to the tune of Betty Hutton's old musical “Sewing Machine.”
Sew Torn’s suspense tricks are little more than a pretext for more fantastical fantasy: the characters are so abstract that the life-and-death stakes in the plot feel like coincidence, though Connolly is a likable presence enough to draw us into Barbara’s erratic movements, if not their far-fetched moral consequences. Aided by Sebastian Klinger’s primary-color cinematography and Vivian Rapp’s relaxed, era-blending production design, Sew Torn evokes a kind of adult theme park where time and death can be twisted, torn apart and stitched together. If Macdonald can apply this playful reimagining of reality to bigger ideas and bolder stories, it could be the next big thing.
