40 Shades of Blue

The story centres on Laura (Dina Korzun), the Russian immigrant wife of fictional Memphis Soul music producer Alan James (Rip Torn) and their lives in modern Memphis. Laura is a lost soul, emotionally detached from her husband, living her life as spouse and mother a long way from home and not enjoying a single minute of it. This is until Alan's married son Michael (Darren Burrows) pays a visit from Los Angeles and an edgy affair develops between them, threatening to pull both of their quiet bourgeois lives apart, as well as that of their respective partners.

Sachs has clearly learned a lot from Ken Loach. There is something of his observational documentary style about this film, where characters appear to catch the eye of the camera, sitting like a silent observer, as they wander in and out of shot. There is also the powerful feeling of lives unsatisfied and alienated - even the financially successful Alan (played with understated brilliance by Torn) with his trophy wife that his given him a son, needs to find spiritual solace in the bottle and extra-marital sex.

The domestic backdrop of fading seventies décor, unrenewed and fusty, coupled with a washed-out look, provides a visual connection with the British director's work. More importantly than that, however, Sachs wrestles in an American context with the working class dilemma of sacrificing dreams, American or otherwise, for survival. The tragedy at the heart of this film is the tension between wanting your dreams and the hollow lack of fulfilment felt at actually having them.

These big existential themes are treated with the requisite amount of lacunae and pathos in the writing, acting and cinematography. But, at heart, there still seems to be something laboured and unnecessarily heavy-handed about what is a very slight story where nothing-much-happens-but-happens-very-dramatically.

In this sense, it makes it reminiscent of Lost in Translation, another film that occasionally gives you a sense of being far too pleased with itself. These shortcomings may reflect Sachs's lack of experience or his self-indulgence (he has noted there is a significant autobiographical element to the film), but regardless, it does make you shrug your shoulders and think "well, so what?"

Moreover, there is, for me, far too much that is suggested and implied rather than made explicit. Why does Alan cheat on his wife? Why does Laura stay when she is clearly so unhappy? And why does educated professor Michael fall in love with this anaemic Russian woman who barely smiles or talks and apparently experiences no joy from him, or her son, or anything at all? Are we supposed to conclude that it is in the human condition that we are to be unhappy and frustrated? That's a rather depressing thought.

Nevertheless, it is in the intriguing style and the bleak execution, not in the non-sequiturs and unanswered questions, that the film draws much of its strength. Those who enjoy Loach's work will find plenty that is rewarding here. Others may find its story of lives led in quiet desperation a little too much to bear.

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