Particles of Truth

REVIEW
It’s two days before Lilli Black’s (Jennifer Elster) first big gallery showing; she’s one of five young artists preparing to face professional and public critical evaluation — none of which can be as damning as her self-examination. She meets Morrison (Gale Harold, “Queer as Folk”), a young published author who spends as much time as possible in his car, taking notes on the teeming humanity he views through his windshield. The two creative spirits experience the first tentative stirrings of mutual attraction as the ghosts of past and present emotional injury haunt the here and now, exacerbating the intrinsic, conflicting polarities of the imaginative process. Lilli is a child of children; her parents were 16 years old when she was born, living a Lower East Side drug life. Her dad was always supportive of her expressive drawings; he’s dying now and she does not speak to him. Morrison’s father, wealthy and hypercritical, demeans the earning power of his son’s published work. The past continues to intrude on the present as the gallery opening approaches, and pretense gives way to raw emotion. In her impressive feature directorial debut, Elster (who also wrote the script) utilizes arresting imagery, creating iconic portraits from mundane figures and conducting a symphony of damage: damaged relationships, damages psyches, damaged lives. The camera spies on the characters, glimpsing them through windows and at oblique angles. Reflexive duplicities and festering grudges reach critical mass, and Lilli heads the list of the walking wounded who trudge toward explosive meltdown. Whether from the tenement or the penthouse, one cannot search for meaning without engaging the soul. And that is always dangerous. Particles of Truth is both brutal and forgiving, and bears witness to Elster’s exciting, emerging talent.