Michael is survived by his mother and father, stiff upper-crust types who may as well be royalty as far as trailer-park escapee Josie is concerned. The voice on the other end wants to know whether he has any family.ĭoes he ever. “Paint It Black” opens in Josie’s apartment, where she has passed out with one hand in her panties when her custom-decorated telephone rings, bearing the news that her tortured emo lover, Michael (Rhys Wakefield), has been discovered in some random desert hotel, having painted the walls with his brains. After all, it takes a lot of work to look like you just don’t care.
Shawkat knows just how to play the young lady, though the character ultimately benefits from sterling contributions by all departments, from production designer Markus Kirschner and costume designer Christine Peters to the hair and makeup team who make the freckled star look so wonderfully feral.
Likewise, a dead man sets the plot of “Paint It Black” in motion, only this time, the corpse in question offed himself, turning the rest of the movie over to the ladies - mostly his chain-smoking girlfriend Josie ( Alia Shawkat), a grungy artist’s model who dresses like a cheap hooker and lives in hipster squalor, surrounded by curbside-rescue furniture and other thrift-store finds. In “White Oleander,” a teenager’s life was set adrift after her mom went to prison for murdering her boyfriend. That’s how “Paint It Black” reads as well - unapologetically coarse at times, but gleaming with insights - and Tamblyn has tried, to the best of her ability, to achieve the same effect on screen. Fitch, whose “White Oleander” offered four talented blondes a chance to act their guts out 15 years ago, finds beauty in white trash, the way a bric-a-brac artist might transform old junk into something delightful. As directorial debuts go, Amber Tamblyn’s “Paint It Black” is kind of a mess, but then, so are its characters, which makes the film’s raw, off-kilter style somehow right for the material, which began as a Janet Fitch novel.
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