Things I Don't Understand

David Spaltro goes and gives us another character to care about, and follows up his very good "...Around" with an excellent "Things I Don't Understand." Violet (Molly Ryman) is a troubled grad student writing a thesis on what happens do us when we die. She is a roommate, in an apartment above a bar, with two flaky artist types- Gabby (Meissa Hampton) and Remy (Hugo Dillon). The trio are being evicted unless they can come up with an astronomical amount for a deposit. Violet drinks too much, and flirts with stone-faced bartender Parker (Aaron Mathias), who has his own set of problems concerning his former wife. Violet is seeing a therapist, Dr. Blankenship (Lisa Eichhorn), who in turn sends her to a hospice to get to know terminal cancer patient Sara (an excellent Grace Folsom). Sure, despite a suicide attempt, Violet is not about to die, and while the therapist's motive may have been to show Violet she doesn't have it that bad, Violet and Sara become good friends. As the deadline for the deposit payment approaches, Violet tries to keep her somewhat hectic life together, but things unravel in a few very surprising ways.

Spaltro delivers a dark character study that would have been romanticized in other hands. Lonely girl in the big city who befriends a bunch of "flaky" people, this could have turned into a mild Jennifer Aniston or Reese Witherspoon vehicle, complete with a disastrous Thanksgiving dinner and a play about vaginas that you know is going to be a train wreck from its opening seconds. But Spaltro writes us Violet, and I was immediately caught up in her troubled existence, as she used her thesis as an excuse to really discover if this was it in life. His opening few minutes, which provides exposition in a new way, is great, and I was immediately onboard. Molly Ryman never makes Violet out to be a victim, and even keeps her likable as her character makes some bad decisions. She doesn't play her as a wide-eyed innocent caught in the big bad city, Violet deal...