There was a gritty realism to "Saving Zoë" and a creative set of filmmaking skills on display. The two sisters, Zoë and Echo, really looked like sisters, and indeed they were performed by actresses who are sisters. The film blends the present with the past, and it incorporates the appearances of Zoë in flashbacks and in surreal appearances to her younger sister.
There is good dramatic tension developed among the troubled young people at Lincoln Carter High School. The party scenes were all unpleasant, and the only genuinely supportive relationship developed was that of the sisters.
A creaky plot device to advance the action both forward and backward in time is the diary belonging to Zoë that is being read by Echo and reenacted in scenes leading to her Zoë' murder. The artificiality of the conceit of the diary bogged the film down.
While the director developed a fine ensemble of actors, the film's grim subject matter and the bleak feeling of family and social dysfunction pervaded the action. The parents of the sisters seemed hopelessly mired in themselves with the mother overly medicated and the father a workaholic. The house calls of the psychiatrist seemed forced, artificial, and non-productive.
Young Echo was forced to take matters into her own hands in order to understand what happened to her sister. And the horror of what she discovers in a tawdry basement is ultimately the landscape of a wasteland of shattered human values.
There is good dramatic tension developed among the troubled young people at Lincoln Carter High School. The party scenes were all unpleasant, and the only genuinely supportive relationship developed was that of the sisters.
A creaky plot device to advance the action both forward and backward in time is the diary belonging to Zoë that is being read by Echo and reenacted in scenes leading to her Zoë' murder. The artificiality of the conceit of the diary bogged the film down.
While the director developed a fine ensemble of actors, the film's grim subject matter and the bleak feeling of family and social dysfunction pervaded the action. The parents of the sisters seemed hopelessly mired in themselves with the mother overly medicated and the father a workaholic. The house calls of the psychiatrist seemed forced, artificial, and non-productive.
Young Echo was forced to take matters into her own hands in order to understand what happened to her sister. And the horror of what she discovers in a tawdry basement is ultimately the landscape of a wasteland of shattered human values.