Release Date: Currently Available via VOD Platforms
Director: J.P. Riley
MPAA Rating: R
Film Pulse Score: 3.5/10
Act Naturally is a good name for this small independent film because the cast actually acts naturally. The ease with which all the cast members inhabit their characters is the film’s best aspect. The film itself is not extraordinary because the script is relatively weak as far as plot and subtext is concerned, but the performances are thoroughly enjoyable from the primary cast of actors, particularly the two leads – Katie L. Hall (who is one of the film’s four co-writers) and Liz Lytle.
The film tells the story of two sisters, Leah (Hall) and Charlie (Lytle), who do not know one another but are thrown together when their father dies and they head out to collect his belongings from where he had been living. Leah is the man’s adoptive daughter with whom he apparently had a good relationship and Charlie is his blood daughter with whom he apparently had little to know relationship at all. The two meet up and drive out to his residence unaware that it is a naturalist – or nudist – resort which he owned.
There is some light comedy throughout the film, especially when the women arrive and make the discovery of their father’s pastime. Over the course of a weekend, they stay at the camp and meet various residents of varying degrees of interest to both them and to me as a viewer. The film is surprisingly unpredictable in places although the ending can be seen from a mile away. Prior to that ending, however, we are treated to the young women’s encounters with incredibly nice and normal people who happen to live life in the buff. Those encounters include arguments, romance, friendship, and more, all in a 90 minute film. I mention that the script is not particularly strong because these encounters and the relationship (a) between the sisters and (b) between the sisters and the residents are not particularly well-developed.
But the characters are fairly well-developed and that made the film much more watchable than the plot about the women’s arrival and stay at the camp as well as the decision they must make about what to do with the resort when they are told their father left it to them in his will. The latter provides rather predictable drama as the women are initially convinced the right thing to do is to sell the resort despite the fact that it essentially means evicting the men and women for whom the place is home. Right up until the end, Leah and Charlie are determined to sell despite the warm feelings they have developed for the inhabitants. And thus arrives the predictable ending when Charlie, who by the film’s third act had accepted the naturalist lifestyle for herself, decides to stay on at the resort and keep it up and running.
So much of the film feels like a setup for what could have been a longer film or a second film that shows at least Charlie’s management of the resort. I found the characters charming enough that I would have no problem seeing more of the inhabitants – well, that is a poor choice of words because you see all of the inhabitants and then some given their unclothed state of being. What I meant to refer to is seeing more of the interesting personalities better and more fully developed than what the film was able to accomplish in its short running time. Though I cannot admit to being a huge fan of the film, I would have no problem watching Act Naturally 2 that delved more deeply into the surface which was only scratched here.
