Review by Ben Bussey
Stuart Simpson would appear to be a filmmaker for whom “start as you mean to go on” was never the maxim. After breaking through internationally with 2010’s gleefully trashy neo-grindhouse movie Monstro! (AKA El Monstro del Mar), the Australian indie director has taken a rather different path for his next movie (actually his third, after 2006’s The Demons Among Us). With nary a supernatural entity in sight, Simpson takes us into the everyday life of a simple-minded, largely friendless ice cream man, whose isolation and emotional problems lead him deeper into a fantasy world, as his fixation on a TV soap opera actress, his grief over the death of his pet cat, and a conflict with a local small-time criminal threaten to push him to breaking point. I came to this screening at Sheffield’s annual horror festival with high expectations, based not only on my enjoyment of Simpson’s last film, but also the hugely positive reaction this film has been met with on the international festival circuit. It is with a heavy heart, then, that I must admit I wasn’t completely won over by Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla. While there is without doubt a great deal to applaud in the film, somehow it ultimately rings a bit hollow for me.
From the moment I read the premise of Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla, I was immediately reminded of another recent ice cream-related movie, Some Guy Who Kills People, in which Kevin Corrigan portrays the ostensibly similar role of a troubled, mid-thirties ice cream parlour employee with a murderous fixation on the bullies that ruined his life. The two films are in truth very different from one another, but I can’t help noting that the key reason I was personally so taken with Some Guy Who Kills People (you may recall it made our top 20 films of the past 5 years) was how it wound up going completely the opposite direction from what I had anticipated: rather than being a gloomy, pessimistic, descent-into-madness story, it was surprisingly upbeat and optimistic. My main problem with Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla, then, is that it’s pretty much exactly the film I had initially expected Some Guy to be. From the synopsis alone, it’s quite clear where the film is headed, as this poor, deeply troubled and lonely man grows ever more troubled and ever more lonely, and the veil of sanity grows ever thinner. There’s never a doubt that it will all end badly – but even when the shit finally does hit the fan, it’s more of a small damp splat than the overwhelming storm of shredded fecal matter we might have hoped for.
Still, this is not to suggest that Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla has nothing going for it. The film may tell a fairly familiar tale, but it tells it well – and this is thanks in no small part to the efforts of leading man Glenn Maynard as ice cream man Warren. A near-constant presence throughout the film, Maynard (who also co-produces and co-conceived the story) does great work painting a sympathetic portrait of – in the truest sense of the word – a pathetic man, as we follow him day-by-day through his humdrum routine: a routine which is immediately thrown out of sync by the death of his pet cat. This early moment rather sets the tone, for while there’s certainly a dash of dark humour, Warren’s grief isn’t played for laughs at all. As we come to realise he’s essentially lost the closest friend he had, there’s no question that things are only going to get worse. And lo and behold they do, as Warren finds himself inadvertently sharing the turf of pimp and drug dealer Rocko (a brilliantly obnoxious and sinister turn from Aston Elliot). What begins as schoolboy-ish bullying from both Rocko and his cronies gradually builds into outright threatening behaviour when Warren has the nerve to talk back – and again, it’s clear things will only get worse.
Taxi Driver is an obvious point of reference; loner in a vehicle, seemingly invisible to his customers, inwardly grimacing at the ugliness he sees on the streets – a pimp in particular – and longing for the affection of an unavailable woman. However, Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla’s Warren has considerably less violence in his background than Travis Bickle, and his object of desire – soap star Katie George (Kyrie Capri, previously seen in Monstro!) – is so patently unattainable it hurts. When Katie George unexpectedly enters Warren’s life, it isn’t too hard to work out where things are headed, but that doesn’t make Warren’s pain any less palpable. Again, kudos to Glenn Maynard, for when Warren’s inevitable breakdown finally comes, it is haunting to witness.
Still, as compelling as Maynard’s performance is, I have to wonder if they could have found a better way to explore his mental state than the use of video diaries. These are introduced maybe 30 minutes into the film, and more or less takes precedence from that point on, with Maynard delivering a series of direct-to-camera monologues filling us in on Warren’s past and giving us some insight into his state of mind. Clearly these scenes are intended to help put things into context, but I can’t help feeling the film might have been stronger without them; it just feels a bit of a tired and obvious device to me, and I can’t help feeling the diary entries only really serve to pad the running time out rather than telling us anything we truly need to know. Far more interesting to my mind are the comparatively under-emphasised daydream sequences, wherein Warren imagines himself as a new love interest for Katie George on Round The Block (a brilliant spoof of the soaps for which Australia is notorious), and as an Eastwood-eque gunslinger facing off against Rocko’s Lee Van Cleef. These, I think, give us an equal insight into Warren whilst playing out in a more interesting and dryly humourous way.
Ultimately, Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla’s main flaw is also its key strength: its single-minded focus on one character. By keeping the spotlight squarely on Warren and leaving all other characters in the background, it feels like the film ultimately spreads itself pretty thin to make it to feature-length. Still, the performances are solid and the direction is assured; this film certainly cements Stuart Simpson as a filmmaker to keep an eye on, and if his next is as far removed from this as it is from his previous film, who knows what to expect (though he did tell us a while back he’s working on something a bit Mad Max-ish). Still, as much as I hate to detract from the pretty much unequivocal praise Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla is garnering elsewhere, I can’t help feeling this film is ultimately another stepping stone toward truly great work in the future, rather than the masterpiece many are declaring it to be.
Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla is released to UK DVD and Blu-ray on 10th November 2014, from Monster Pictures.