AMBER BENSON
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			Always leave the door open Amber Benson's debut movie "Chance"
		[Note: So this is the article which actually started what eventually became this site. It was printed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on October 9, 2003. As with most of the other stuff in the English section, including the Interview, the translation was donme by myself, so expect some less than classy English – I’m trying, OK? I’ve left the beginning of the article out, since it is sort of a burlesque/absurdist telling of the difficulties Europeans have to overcome if they want to watch/buy the film. It' s somewhat long-winded, so good riddance, just go to www.chancemovie.com and let the nice people over there instruct you further. Finally, the movie itself is discussed:] "..and you can congratulate yourself for sticking with it, because the film really is as good as that, making it worth your while. Because what has been such a challenge to obtain is one of those films that allow you to watch a very specific kind of growing-up-process at a very specific time in history in such a precise way that you canoot help but either be happy about being heleped along the way in your own process of growing up, or be glad that you can enjoy the spectacle as an adult, since you've obviously at least made it that far. John Hughes "Breakfast Club" (1985), though flawed and somewhat saccharine, was one of those movies, so was Rochard Linklaters "Slacker" (1991) – the latter showed us a generation which for the first time after WW 2 had to face the prospect of slower economic growth and less affluence than was to be expected for a young person in their parents' time. Cameron Crowe's slick relationship-comedy "Singles" (1992) thet took Linklaters idea, mixed it with some MTV-tested "Grunge"- and "Alternative"-Lifestyle-ingredients, cooked the whole stew using moderate heat and thus created an image for Teenagers, Tewenty- and Thirtysomethings which stuck with us for a while, somehwat poor, without goals, and marketing people along with those trendy reality-Tv-Show-producers quickly learned to exploit it for making those kids they invent seem more realistic. "Chance" on the other hand, that excpetional picture that you have to order somewhere over the rainvow, is also about young people hovering above the abyss of being unwanted. Ist title can mean "luck" or "coincidence", but refers also to the heroine- a young women who keeps an open mind and heart, remains ready and willing to wonder and tries to get by in her Mid-Twenties. The role is played by Amber Benson, about whom you've read a portrait in this paper before (F.A.Z. march 14th, 2003) – as you know, she's everything but a leaf in the wind of fate. Ms. Benson knows what she can do and what she's after, she wrote the film, directed it, wrote some music and produced the resulting Gesamtkunstwerk with her mother and sister. Quite different from the kind of newspaper-advice-column-problem-solving or calculated "Shell"-Youth-Study-Stuff and generation-exploitation-junk-literature we've come to loathe, this film does not pretty things up. It' s a comedy about a girl who is financially supported by her parents and in turn supports, as in: does not collect the rent from, a young, somewhat aimless romantic named Simon (James Marsters). These people are not cardboard characters out of sports-shoe-advertising. They are being justified through the miracle of context: They do not just have problems but also courage, staying power, emotional skills, i.e.: everything the artist mainly responsible for the film brought to the set herself.
		Chance's brother, whom we do not get to see in the entire movie, is present in subtle ways – his Name is "Zero", their father must have thought it funny, imagining how he called after them: "Come here, Zero, Chance." Zero chance – no Future: When these kids were conceived and born, something else was conceived and born – a music, lifestyle and attitude we call "Punk Rock": Amber Benson was born in January of 1977, the year of the Sex Pistols. The most surprising and charming thing about "chance" is the way in which – most unusually for a film of this genre – the non-sentimental approach to life that Punk inaugurated is being put to richer uses than just those of showing off your own toughness, a form spectacle into which the Punk attitude and Approach to life (ahem) degenerated all too readily. "Chance" looks at things without showing fear: Gender issues, sex torubles, one-night-stands, parental divorce, waking up next to dead people. The guy who does not pay rent gets "female stuff" for his quasi-landlady. He's a good-looking bloke, but he does not smell pretty. When Chance's Mutter drops by to confess her marital troubles, the two people who live in Chance's appartment confuse her with some role-playing which is never explained : Simon, in a dress and make-up, pretends to be chance, Chance, with painted-on moustache, sits on the sofa and mouths off in boyish fashion. Bi- and Ambisexualities, playful polymorophous perversions, are the most normal thing in the world: Chance picks up a girl at a club, falls in love with a gay singer (the very winsome actor and singer Andy Hallet) who in turn falls for Simon. Meanwhile, Chance's father has an affair with his teenage private secretary. The goings – on at Chance's appartment are being watched, not just by us, but also by a strangely voyeuristic neighbour who is obsessed by dead bugs. Questions are being asked: Why are girls not allowed to pick up a guy and dump him after some fun? Do parents creep us out or delight us when they re-seduce each other by quoting Shakespeare? How many cool cinematic tricks can you use on such a story on a budget? Quite a lot, actually: Chance talks into the camera, her voice accompanies pictures where she is not seen, the rhythm of the story is being counterpointed by smart stuttery syncopes, the music gets video-clip-treatment sometimes – Singer/Songwriter Grant langston is on–, then off-camera singing his songs. In sum, this film shows you how to nurture your own ability to look at your life in a non-sentimental but funny way. As the weird bug-necrophiliac gets ready to move out of the building, he gives Chance a most wonderful compliment: no matter how bizarre things get for her, she a lways leaves the door open. That is exactly the mood of the film and the moral of ist distribution story, which tells ist tail, like a book subscirption, to "the people", those who are interested. Both worked out fine, the film and the distribution story. At shwings, the film was a success, and the Videos and DVDs are being ordered. So, to re-iterate the moral: it's about risk and luck, as well as the happy coincidences (of media history). It's a story to raise your spirits, for even at times of crisis, there are enough hearts who will listen to a tale like this. Or as Amber Benson herself put it in a recent interview: 'Everything worked out much better than I had thought before.' Dietmar Dath © F.A.Z. 2003 > back to top