Hot Docs Film Review – ‘Caiti Blues’
“There are so many other things beautiful about me.”
There are indeed many beautiful things about Caiti Blues, a new documentary film by French Canadian director Justine Harbonnier. There are beautiful landscape shots with beautiful clouds and vast skies. There are a variety of beautiful eccentric characters. And there is Caiti and her beautiful singing voice.
What there is not in this film is any kind of context. I had to do some detective work on my phone for about half the run time of the film just to determine where it was shot. I felt like I had fallen asleep and slipped into a vivid dream, with no idea where I was, who these people were, or what I was doing there. By the end of the 80 minutes, I was still wondering.
Caiti Blues plays like a short story and has the intimate charm of a video web log. Director Harbonnier follows Caiti Lord as she goes through her days living in the desert of New Mexico, between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. She lives in Madrid (pronouned MAD-rid), an old mining town that’s become a kind of hippy outpost. Caiti explains to a customer at the Mineshaft Tavern where she tends bar that she was on her way to San Francisco, but never made it.
Caiti has a radio program on KMRD, the local radio station. She’s also an aspiring musician with a bachelor’s degree (presumably in music), but only $36,000 in student-loan debt to show for it. Her on-air banter and the snippets of her song lyrics used as chapter markers provide the bulk of the commentary. Precious home-video clips of Caiti’s childhood in New York state punctuate the film.
The slogan on the back of Caiti’s hoodie reads, “Madrid has no town drunk, we all take turns.” According to one of her songs, Caiti quit the bottle but it didn’t quit her. In any case, this film has a distinct day-drinking vibe. Nothing much appears to go on in Madrid, other than the He/She Bang (an evening of non-heteronormative music performance), and nothing much goes on in this film. Drinking, smoking, and playing some music.
As the film ends, Caiti gets a new job for which she had to audition. The job involves singing show tunes and appears to be at a restaurant, perhaps in Santa Fe or Albuquerque. I was happy for Caiti, because she seems like a very sweet soul who’s getting chewed up by late-stage capitalism and “modern-day America.” But I must say, despite my affinity for cinema vérité, a little more detail about who and what I’m looking at would have been appreciated.
Caiti Blues directed by Justine Harbonnier recently screened at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto. hotdocs.ca
