Jeff Winner's Satellite might be a fine film if it could decide what kind of film it wanted to be. At times, it works as a swooning romantic fairy tale, the kind where no gesture is too big and no line of dialogue too pseudo-poetic; other times, it tries to strap its feet to the ground and stay within the confines of New York City realism. While I think most fairy-tale romance movies could do with a bracing shot of reality to keep them from floating away, the genre graft here is unsuccessful.
Satellite details the relationship of Kevin (Karl Geary) and Ro (Stephanie Szostak). They meet one night in a bar after Ro follows (i.e. stalks) Kevin off a subway and almost immediately fall into a crazy, heedless love, the kind that makes you look at the stars and think deeply profound thoughts while entertaining the idea of casting off all responsibilities to spend every waking moment with this lovely person next to you. That, in fact, is exactly what they do: after making a 'dare' pact (if one of them dares the other to do something, the dared party has to do it), they both quit their jobs and run off to live together, keeping themselves going via thievery. It seems that, through this radical act, they both hope to discover something bigger than themselves; the question is, what exactly are they looking for?
Part of the success of a film like Satellite rests on one's opinion of the characters and the actors playing them. When you boil it down, this is essentially an offbeat chamber drama; thus, it's critical that we sympathize with the people in the chamber. This, then, is the first point where Winner lost me. Kevin and Ro alternate between being unique and compelling characters and being childish nitwits. A prime example of the latter is the aforementioned 'dare' pact. Such a pact is, at its core, a children's game — a way of regressing and eluding responsibility for one's actions. It works at first, but as the film develops, the immaturity at its heart makes it difficult to take the two seriously.
Of course, I realize that what I'm complaining about is intentional. Any film that opens with someone on a New York City subway reading a book entitled This Is a Fairy Tale is, on some level, attempting to work as a children's fable. The voiceover narration, which features a young girl spouting lines like, "The way I see it, we're all like stars in the sky," drives this home. Furthermore, part of Winner's point is the consequences of walking away from the responsible, 'adult' world and what one gives up to attempt an idyllic existence. But Winner tries to have it both ways, and it's the sense that he can't commit to his film's preciousness that drives me further away from caring about Kevin and Ro.
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