Uncertain Terms

Carla’s home is an asylum, a purgatory and a place for life’s castaways, such as pregnant teens and wayward girls, to hide from the world and wait for a new beginning. It is also the residence of Carla’s kin, a 30-year-old who ran from a marriage on the rocks. As the housemates spend more time together, they increasingly open up to talk, share advice, reminisce, party and flirt. They gradually edge closer. Sometimes too close. The atmosphere in the house favors intimacy but also conflict. The camera lens watches all this patiently, curiously and hidden from view while following the protagonists. Silver’s film represents cinema focused on prosaic situations; conversation, gestures, and peaking emotions. It is a work of realism that is unhewn and spare in means of expression; modest, but living.