Round three with director Cody Clarke restrains us to what is generally the most comfortable place in the world: the bed. With Bed, Clarke steps in front of the camera to play one half of the film’s engaging couple. His partner is the wonderful Chloe Castiglioni. The two of them go through a lot of emotions in Bed, but comfortable doesn’t come up as often as expected.
In short, it’s a bottle movie. The camera is almost always trained on the titular bed, and the characters are almost always occupying that bed. Save for a couple of choice shots while the girlfriend prepares to go to work early on, we are in the bed with them for the duration of the film.
If you don’t think that premise sounds enticing, I don’t blame you. It’s not one that immediately lends itself to being cinematic. There are no action or outdoor shots. When the boyfriend goes to cook dinner, we stay with the girlfriend in bed. The energy of the film relies entirely on Clarke and Castiglioni’s performances and chemistry.
The screenplay, adapted from Clarke’s own novella of the same name, gives us a lazy, but not languishing day with this couple. After brief resistance from the girlfriend, our heroes decide that this day, a weekday, is one that deserves to be spent in bed. That decision feels spontaneous. In truth, most days spent in bed aren’t put on a schedule or planned for. And yet, as Bed progresses, the spontaneity of the event begins to disappear. I don’t mean that in the sense that it was a secret plan that either character was intending on carrying out for days or weeks prior, but that their presence and the ultimate trajectory of their day leads to, in my opinion, a fated reckoning.
Bed meanders at first, finding its footing and establishing a relationship that the viewer encounters deep into its existence. Most of the specifics are kept hidden and only referred to in subtext. The deeper we sink into their relationship, the more I thought about what this day would have been if they didn’t spend it all in bed together. The boyfriend might have still been in that bed, or he might have wandered down to the store at the corner. The girlfriend would have gone to work and spent the day readjusting her shirt to avoid any lingering pain from her sunburn. What we get is a day filled with highs and lows.
Fans of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy will find a lot to like in Bed. Clarke combines elements from all three of those films. He shows their relationship at its height as boyfriend and girlfriend smile, laugh, have sex, and revel in each other’s company. He reveals its nadir as they bicker, argue, and question what their relationship is and means to each of them. I found myself identifying with the boyfriend and the girlfriend at various points, but the final act went the direction I didn’t want. I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a good thing or not.
This single location film works. Chloe Castiglioni is excellent. Cody Clarke remains as skilled a director as he has been with his previous films that I’ve seen (Mute Date and Ramekin). Your enjoyment and experience will hinge on how invested you become in this relationship. I wasn’t hooked from the first shot, but Bed pulled me in. Clarke has a knack for turning innocuous things into pertinent pieces in his stories.
Check out this teaser trailer for Bed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rySVa4hDIbw
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