By Alex Denison

Photo Courtesy of A Polite Company Film

About Love… technically fulfills the assertions of its title, though largely without the bubblegum nonsense of Hollywood sentimentality. The collection of six short films playing at Citizen Jane Film Festival instead focuses on discontent. The inexplicable desire to remain attached, the elasticity of love’s juggled definition and the unshakeable strive for emotional ideals in the face of relationship reality – the uglier truths hidden behind slow-motion lip-locks.

The opening selection and lone documentary, Love Lockdown, follows the struggle of Shoshana, a mother-of-two struggling to keep a strained relationship alive. Arrested on their wedding day, fiancé Felix sits behind bars and clings to the short conversations he gets with Shoshana and his children while waiting for her voice to shine through on late-night, shout-out radio.  Filmmaker Nadia Halgren says the popular New York call-in fixture led her to Shoshana, who conveniently lives across the street in the Bronx.

As Felix prepares to defend himself in court against all recommendations, Shoshana and the kids work to pull themselves out of welfare and into a better life. With or without Felix, the family knows that change is a necessity. And while love is on the lips of every character, the underlying realities of the situation don’t seem encouraging for its full blossom.

In contrast, the characters of Kaz Phillip’s Megafauna have their “love,” but it gushes more like a head wound than Cupid’s arrow through the heart. Beautifully shot in startling rack-focus dialogues by Frozen River cinematographer Reed Morano, a married couple shares their crossed misinterpretations of what love means and whether it is worth the fight.

Most of the films, fittingly, sympathize with the emotional albatross dangling ‘round the necks of their female characters, desperately clawing to keep love an attainable goal. Unfortunately for nearly all the characters, love’s questions are rarely answered definitively or without pain.

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