
Stay the Same Never Change stars amateur actors in Kansas City. Though the story is scripted, the movie is shot in the actors' real homes, so that the end result is a mix of visual fact and narrative fiction. It's a story about people and the lives they're living while wanting more. Whether it's a family man looking for beauty or a young woman obsessed with polar bears and Oprah, the characters in this film reveal quiet lives full of sadness and desire.... (Full plot summary below)
Enjoy FREE movies and series with your Prime (USA) subscription or when you start a 30-day free trial!
Links compiled using automated software. Availability of offers subject to change / might be region specific / out of date.
Stay the Same Never Change stars amateur actors in Kansas City. Though the story is scripted, the movie is shot in the actors' real homes, so that the end result is a mix of visual fact and narrative fiction. It's a story about people and the lives they're living while wanting more. Whether it's a family man looking for beauty or a young woman obsessed with polar bears and Oprah, the characters in this film reveal quiet lives full of sadness and desire.
Leave your thoughts about Stay the Same Never Change.
| Spirituality and PracticeFrederic and Mary Ann BrussatAn alluring and exotic look at the desires of lonely and bored teenage girls caught and carried away by their powerful desires for love and human connection. |
| Slant MagazineEd GonzalezShines a light on an artist's prurient, shamelessly exploitative, and attention-grabbing instincts. |
| User ReviewNosh SIf you didn't love this movie you are an artless whore with no soul. The tone is phenomenal and was my highlight of Sundance 2009 ... |
| User ReviewWill PThis is what film festival were made for! David Lynch Meets Cindy Sherman Meets Napolean Dynomite meets Judy Blume |
| User ReviewSaharat SHas a documentary feel to it--about a bunch of girls in the midwest and their relationship to the men in their lives; very subtle with a lot of implications which leaves interpretations up to us about what happens in a certain scene...desire, lust, submission...etc; has kind of a deadpan feel to it--some scenes work better as video art--which makes sense since that was the original format--gained more of an appreciation for this movie once the director talked about it after the screening |
| User ReviewMarica MThis was a REALLY odd film, and not at all how I expected it to be from reading the blurb in the programme: "featuring real people in their own real homes who have taken on the lives created for them by the director" I assumed we were either going to see a snapshot of someone's life or they would speak about themselves, and then the director would come in and present them with a scenario/storyline or character to be, and then we would watch them take on that role and act it out, and see how they dealt with issues as they came up. But it wasn't like that at all! It was one of those disillusioned suburban-America films, a type of misery memoir for the homemade video generation, following the lives of several characters - mainly teenage girls - who all live in the same neighbourhood, vaguely connected, but they are all beyond strange. One spends her time leaving monotone sympathetic voicemail messages on the phones of tornado victims, one is a super-emo obsessed with love and death, one girl is transfixed with going to the local races*, and the other has a boyfriend the shape of a life size blow up muscle man doll. Is this them living out their real lives, or is it fiction? It is never clarified. Usually quirky pieces like this are enchanting and charming and really stand out as something to be admired and cherished, the way you love a cult film that no one else has heard of. But this was slow and dreary and didn't seem to have a point to it. I did like the lack of melodrama, but it was almost comatose of drama at times. You began to just accept they were all a bit mental rather than actually being shocked or unsettled by their actions (an emotion the director was seeking). I was actually nodding off towards the end of it - with so many long days and so many films to see, this was not a stand out to get me excited or inspired. *or something like that - I didn't quite catch it and it's probably an Americanism. She did keep dressing up as a crocodile monster... |