Footstep Man

1992

Johnny's comments:

The Footstep Man is a 1992 drama where a sound technician/foley artist Sam (Steven Grives) is tasked with providing the sound for an arty movie about Toulouse-Lautrec and his lover directed by Vida (Rosey Jones). The movie is a bleak look at their lives but it is starting to affect Sam who takes a liking to one of the characters in the movie, Mirielle (Jennifer Ward-Lealand) and he starts seeing her everything and he just might be cracking up, again. After firing his workmate for incompetence on the insistance of Vida, he takes over the recording of sound for the movie completely becomes obsessed with Mirielle to the point where she starts talking to him and taking over the equipment in the studio, finally telling him to make Vida give the movie a more uplifting ending. She resists this notion but comes around after coming to terms with her own trauma. Baffling inside baseball movie with a whole lot of movie within a movie scenes but the movie is a decent look at the creative movie making process. But it's also a dour look at the process and the characters are hard to warm to as the live in their own world, coupled with movie within the movie characters being actual characters in the main movie making the movie a constant chore to keep abreast with what's going on. It is an interesting look at the creative process but not an easy one to watch.

I struggle to think who the audience for this movie would've been back in the day let alone now. So much so that the movie has never been released on DVD in New Zealand and it's only been released on DVD in the Netherlands, which is where I got this from a few years ago and promptly forgot about until now. A fair bit of nudity in the movie, all of Jennifer's scenes come from the movie within the movie, which also seems to have a fair bit of nudity, which is joked about when one of the technicians takes a pervy look at one sex scene.

I've also included a quick scene from a 1990 short film also starring Jennifer Ward-Lealand called Linda's Body, a quirkly comedy about a woman who has an out-of-body experience after her partner whistles a certain song which causes her body to become comatose and the woman to enter the afterlife where she meets an old boyfriend who made the song. Not a bad little short either.

Rosey Jones film clip (samples below)

Jennifer Ward-Lealand film clip (collages below)

Linda's Body

1990

I've also included a quick scene from a 1990 short film also starring Jennifer Ward-Lealand called Linda's Body, a quirkly comedy about a woman who has an out-of-body experience after her partner whistles a certain song which causes her body to become comatose and the woman to enter the afterlife where she meets an old boyfriend who made the song. Not a bad little short either.

Jennifer Ward-Lealand film clip (sample below)