One Percent More Humid movie storyline. A coming-of-age story about friendship and grief; Catherine (Julia Garner) and Iris (Juno Temple), childhood friends returning home to a hot and humid New England summer, fill their days and nights with parties, skinny-dipping and rekindling old relationships, but when a shared trauma from their past becomes increasingly difficult to suppress, a wedge between the two grows and each begin to pursue forbidden love affairs.
One Percent More Humid is a 2017 American drama film written and directed by Liz W. Garcia. The film stars Julia Garner, Juno Temple, Maggie Siff, Liz Larsen, Alessandro Nivola, Mamoudou Athie, Olivia Luccardi, Philip Ettinger, Bettina Skye, Reynaldo Piniella and Lorenzo Beronilla. The film was released on April 21, 2017 in the United States by Sony Pictures Releasing.
Film Review for One Percent More Humid
“You used to be so original,” spits a spurned character to her partner near the end of “One Percent More Humid,” but from the outset, writer-director Liz W. Garcia’s indie drama plays like a tag sale of cinematic clichés, each one piled haphazardly atop another.
A dreamy tale of guilt and grief whose affectations prevent any sort of genuine engagement with those emotions, this story about two girls coping with their role in the death of a friend has sporadic moments of genuine passion and humor. Mostly, though, it unravels at a pace far faster than it can spin the stories of its protagonists, limiting the prospects of this Tribeca Film Festival entry.
In an upstate New England university town, twentysomething Iris (Juno Temple) is joined by best friend Catherine (Julia Garner) to waste away the summer smoking weed and skinny-dipping at the local lake. Catherine’s so rich she doesn’t need to seek employment; Iris, a former a “townie,” is determined to earn some money at the local deli and work on her thesis, the subject of which is grief. The reason for that topic soon comes into focus — both women were involved in an auto accident that killed the third member of their tight-knit threesome, Mae (Olivia Luccardi).
Their trauma is revealed through teasing flashbacks, as Iris and Catherine stare off into the distance in shots that have a tendency to go watercolor-smeary around the edges. The visual tic serves no deeper thematic purpose, however, and feels like yet another contrived gesture in a film overflowing with them.
Before long, Iris is wearing her most alluring short skirt in order to seduce her thesis advisor Gerald (Alessandro Nivola), who’s spending the summer away from his wife, Lisette (Maggie Siff), in order to try to write a novel. Even more self-destructively, Catherine initiates her own foolish sexual relationship with Billy (Philip Ettinger), Mae’s roughneck brother, whose reason for hooking up with her has a lot to do with retribution-style rage.
Seeking to screw their sorrow away, both Iris and Catherine are little more than two-dimensional creations, fiery free spirits in the bedroom and with each other, yet otherwise vulnerable, damaged little girls acting out in obviously foolish ways. Garcia sketches backstory details in cursory strokes, and without a real foundation to their characters’ bond or circumstances, Temple and Garner fail to bring much believability to their roles.
Garner’s performance is so flat it negates the narrative’s already precarious balance. Temple, though radiates an unpredictability that can be bracing. In a pot-fueled bout of dancing, sandwich-making and goofing around at her convenience store job, she exudes infectious exuberance; and in her carnal encounters with Gerald, in an affair that otherwise feels like a stale retread of other such movie relationships, she gets at the way in which people manage their misery by channeling it through delirious sexual outbursts.
Garcia and Andreas Burgees’ cinematography is rife with cocked angles and filter-y, attention-grabbing gimmicks. The film’s title comes from Iris’ early comment that even a slight uptick in the temperature might cause everyone to drown. Indeed, “One Percent More Humid” delivers one half-baked element after another until — with a concluding scene that aims for everything-hanging-in-the-air instability but feels more like a final example of directionless — it finally winds up underwater.
One Percent More Humid (2017)
Directed by: Liz W. Garcia
Starring: Julia Garner, Juno Temple, Maggie Siff, Liz Larsen, Alessandro Nivola, Mamoudou Athie, Olivia Luccardi, Philip Ettinger, Bettina Skye, Reynaldo Piniella, Lorenzo Beronilla
Screenplay by: Liz W. Garcia
Production Design by: Jesika Farkas
Cinematography by: Andreas Burgess
Film Editing by: Sam Adelman, Elizabeth Kling
Costume Design by: Evren Catlin
Set Decoration by: Tim Bruno
Art Direction by: Lizzie Hollins
Music by: Nathan Halpern
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, nudity, drug use and language.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Releasing
Release Date: April 21, 2017
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