Lamb, an adaptation of writer Bonnie Nadzam’s novel, charts a complex and often troubling relationship between two unlikely companions: a wayward 11-year-old girl and a depressed 47-year-old man. The title character David Lamb (Ross Partridge, the film’s writer-director) first meets young Tommie (Oona Laurence) when she suggestively ambles alongside him in a parking lot clutching a pink purse and struggling to walk in a pair of heels. Intent on teaching her a lesson, she drags her to his car, ominously scolding her, “I could be taking you somewhere to kill you right now.” In a different sort of movie, a scene like this is a major moment, the kind of turning point that crystallizes a characterization or jumpstarts a storyline. Here, however, it has an inverse effect. Tommie doesn’t seem all that worried about the kind of threat a stranger presents; after being pressed, she basically admits her parents aren’t, either. Dumbfounded, David keeps coming around, hoping to instill a purpose in her but his nuggets of wisdom often feel like low-key threats. Soon, she’s joining him on a cross-country drive out to his ranch property, despite his warnings that what he’s doing looks like kidnapping.
That’s because it is kidnapping, and Partridge knows this. Not only does the director never pretend that what his character is doing isn’t creepy or illegal, he’s also given himself the tricky task of making it seem innocuous, if not innocent or endearing. David goes to great lengths to ensure Tommie’s safety and privacy, and repeatedly tells her that if she ever feels unsafe, he’ll put her on the first bus home. But then he hides her when his girlfriend Linny (Jess Weixler) drops by the ranch, and won’t let her call home when she start to miss her mom. The situation is delicate, and a bit unnerving, but Partridge doesn’t seem to grasp the story’s inherent ugliness, or how his character’s good-guy attitude contradicts his creepy behavior. At the most, he plays it like a double standard, a troubling notion in an age when violent and sexual crimes against women are becoming more prevalent but also more trivialized by male-dominated narratives.
What Partridge does have is a clever and pleasurable sense of space and atmosphere. Most scenes are filled with an abundance of background activity—cars, passersby, eavesdroppers—meaning that even during their most intimate and harrowing moments, Tommie and David are never quite alone. This illustrates not only their shared social paranoia brought on by their awkward companionship, but also society’s nosy and invasive nature writ large. Sometimes, the film is gripping and tense, at other times, it’s slow and leisurely. Partridge may never address the ramifications, legal or otherwise, of the characters’ unconventional courtship, but the film’s various moods establish an abstract set of consequences. What the world makes of this relationship is left to the viewer—the individual—to infer.
Look past these gentle touches, though, and there’s a general lack of depth that the director fills in with pregnant pauses, indie-cinema hubris and screensaver imagery. Most troubling of all is his seeming unwillingness to honor the complications of Nadzam’s story. It is one thing to avoid judging a character or scenario, but essentially backing away from one’s own material is another thing entirely. Nothing in the film feels urgent or necessary, a notion completely at odds with the emotional immediacy implied by the story. As both director and performer, Partridge simply skirts by rather than reconcile with Nadzam’s art, making Lamb worthless as an adaptation and trite overall.
