It is tempting and totally incorrect to put Jamie Adams’ “Love Spreads” on a shelf next to Alex Ross Perry’s “Her Smell”: Both films center on petty, personal rifts expanding between members of all-women rock bands, and the former at first appears, like the latter, concerned with toxic lead singers cursed with too much ego after tasting success. But “Love Spreads” is about early success, the success that sets a band up for album number two, and all the pressure that comes from outputting a hit record and being expected to make another; characters act monstrously toward one another, yes, but the film is not a character study. It’s an industry study.
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“Her Smell” might pair well with “Love Spreads” as a double feature, if only for the sake of contrast in aesthetics, intentions, and focal point. “Love Spreads” doesn’t care for the stereotype of the difficult genius, even if there is a genius in the story, and even if she is, in fact, challenging; that’s Kelly (Alia Shawkat), the frontwoman of indie rock group Glass Heart, joined by bandmates Jess (Chanel Cresswell), Hazel (Ruth Ollman), and Alice (Tara Lee), together holed up in a recording studio in England’s farthest rural reaches. Kelly’s unraveling. The stakes are too high. She’s stricken with the common cold of the artistic process, writer’s block, and cursed with a stubbornness that forbids her from letting in her peers to give their insight, advice, or notes. Consequently, her capacity for tolerating stress is virtually nil.
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So when Alice puts forth the idea of including her own songs on the new record, seeing as Kelly isn’t writing any – she can hardly haul herself out of bed, after all, much less compose music or write lyrics – Kelly reacts as if Judas has just told her why a kiss is necessary. Adams uses their interaction as the movie’s inciting drama; Kelly sees it as a shocking betrayal, and everyone else sees it as a relief. At least someone’s making music. Now the record can take shape, and weeks spent in isolated bucolic purgatory can have meaning! At last!
All of this happens about one half hour into “Love Spreads,” with one more hour left for Adams to tell a story, so of course, the rest isn’t so simple as all that; he doesn’t allow his audience to leave the premises, excepting for brief excursions to the local pub, and Glass Heart’s creative slump doesn’t suddenly resolve itself. That’s the point. “Love Spreads” maintains an up-tempo pace, moving determinedly from beat to beat without putting an end piece on any of them: Adams gets what he needs out of each scene and decisively cuts to the next, editing for impact instead of continuity. “Love Spreads” consequently feels episodic, like an LP unto itself, where every moment feeds into the others but is related through spontaneity. Think of the film as a playlist. (Hey: That’s the name of the site.)
Mike Hopkins asserts the assured sense of control over “Love Spreads” in the edit counterbalances Kelly’s lack of self-control on the other side of the lens: Where she’s unpredictable and slumping, Hopkins’ cuts are made with purpose. He knows what he’s doing. But “Love Spreads” enjoys looseness in its filmmaking, too, a relaxed, hand-held aesthetic; Adams and his cinematographer, Ryan Eddleston, shoot for a hangout vibe and then add layers of discordance through dialogue. We’re in the same space as these characters, watching smoke turn into fire and helpless to do anything about it. The best we can hope for is that the fire doesn’t become a blaze. Being a fly on the wall rarely feels this uncomfortable.
Eddleston keeps the camera close to his subjects, Shawkat’s coiled, twitchy body language, in particular, his work helps instill a confining presence in a plot that’s defined by layers of confinement. Contrasting with how tightly wound everyone in the film is, perhaps Mark (Nick Helm), the band’s manager, most of all. If he isn’t indulging Kelly’s delusions of being wronged by Alice, then he’s getting chewed out by Kelly, and if Kelly’s attentions are elsewhere, or if she’s having a lie-down, he might run afoul of his boss at the record label. The poor schmuck can’t win. Daily phone calls with his wife, Julie (Dolly Wells), document his own buckling mental fortitude as Glass Heart starts to splinter.
If Kelly must have a “good” reason for being a royal pain in the ass, creative roadblocks are as good as reasons go outside of “rampant drug use” or “dead relative.” But “Love Spreads” doesn’t cast much judgment on Kelly, a byproduct of Adams’ observational approach, and puts most of its scrutiny on the machine that Kelly, Jess, Alice, Hazel, Mark, and eventually Patricia (Eiza González), a pinch hitter sent by the record label to help grease the wheels on Glass Heart’s songwriting standstill, are all a part of. The music business is harsh. Kelly’s stultifying ego and resultant catatonia don’t come from anywhere. When dollars, lots of dollars, more specifically lots of someone else’s dollars, are on the line, and when you are young and feel as if millions of eyes are on you as you attempt to outdo yourself, you might suffer a minor breakdown.
“Love Spreads” doesn’t vilify Kelly. It empathizes with her and with her friends, though the film never quite lets her off the hook, either. Ultimately the critique is on the larger ecosystem they inhabit. The drama rests on their efforts to claim self-agency that the circumstances of their success have accidentally denied them. The effect of the message and the medium is trim and unsparing; the sendoff is surprisingly uplifting. Altogether, the package is remarkable. [B+]
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