Shooting a film in Washington, DC is notoriously difficult. The permit system is confusing and expensive, so most films opt for B-roll, or film someplace else entirely. The Spielberg film The Post only has a handful of shots on location, for example, while the Netflix TV series House of Cards was shot almost entirely in Baltimore. Given the poor ways DC is shown in film, it is always a pleasant surprise when someone tries to get it right, particularly if the exteriors do not rely on Pennsylvania Avenue and The National Mall. The new film Bundles is like that: a coming-of-age crime thriller about that was made entirely by locals. It may lack polish – parts of the film are downright amateurish – and yet it tells a compelling story about a community who has been here for generations, and has nothing to do with national politics.
Yavonna Harris stars as Morgan, a high school student who is desperate for escape. One day her former friend Maria (Marissa Arguijo) humiliates her in the cafeteria, and Morgan has a specific plan for revenge. Along with her sister Jackie (Tanisha Cardwell) and two other friends (Alexis Jacquelyn Smith and Naysa Young), Morgan jumps Maria at night and cuts off a big chunk of her hair. This is meant as a prank (Morgan and her accomplices fail to recognize the severity of the crime), and soon they stumble into a scheme they did not expect: high-quality hair is extremely lucrative, to the point where they decide to turn hair theft into a full-on criminal enterprise. This attracts the police’s attention, and some mistakes they make could have deadly consequences.
Directors Ryan Jordan and Jeffrey Leslie film this crime spree with energy and a dangerous sense of fun, sort of like the DC equivalent of Better Luck Tomorrow, a 2002 film from Justin Lin that explores similar themes. As the four young women accumulate more and more money, Jordan and Leslie expand the scope of the repercussions for what they do. Some plot developments are more plausible than others: adding additional accomplices makes matters worse, while news of their crime spreads through the community (somehow they are never caught on camera). Jordan and Leslie rely on too much helicopter footage to pad out their plot, which is ironic since this film is explicitly not about the city’s transient population. The on-the-ground footage is much more successful. They film in rowhouses, beauty shops, parks, and sidewalks, suggesting fascinating stories away from where the powerful operate.
Bundles is outsider art, insofar the production values reflect how the film was made without help from any typical studio or producer. The dialogue can be a little meandering, giving the characters more time to chat than we typically expect, although that comes from a place of affection. There are some other conceits that nearly strain our sense of disbelief: the girls are able to steal hair after knocking out their victims with a taser, for example, but tasers do not typically render people unconscious. The plot also relies on the late introduction of an Asian-American street gang that does not exist in DC, and their methods veer into caricature (you’ll probably roll your eyes when the gang unsheathes samurai swords as their weapon of choice).
In mainstream entertainment, some of these missteps would be enough to dismiss the film entirely. But Blenders has a shaggy DIY quality that is ultimately endearing, and the lead actors handle their roles with an agreeable mix of naivete and energy. Put another way, it’s better to have an inexpensive outsider film that takes risks and celebrates its specificity, rather than expensive mediocrity that’s so broad it barely has an audience.
Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures
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