Back in April 2018, I reviewed a movie from Cody Clarke called Ramekin. It came out a year ago and despite the fact that it did not have a budget in the millions, it was a thoroughly entertaining film. I was later privileged to have Clarke on my podcast and talk to him about Ramekin and future projects he was working on. One of those projects is Mute Date, a 2019 film that he was gracious enough to show me.
Ramekin wasn’t exactly a grounded film, but Mute Date sees Clarke going a step further into the unreal. In Mute Date, we’re transported into the year 2020 (which isn’t as far away as it feels). Our protagonists, Erica Peters (Nina Tandilashvili) and Noah R. Gutman (Anthony Kapfer), have been included in a beta test for a new groundbreaking technology. They are asked to meet at a local park and remain in close proximity for an extended period of time. During this date, their thoughts are conveyed into each other’s heads. Noah thinks something and Erica can hear it, as if it was her own thought. They can communicate without ever opening their mouths.
It’s through this technology that Clarke mines drama, humor, thrills, awkwardness, pain, and distress. It’s a helluva technology. What’s more, the entire film relies on it. Noah and Erica communicate through their entire blind date in thought. It’s fun to watch them learn about each other in an intimate, but cold manner. A person’s face doesn’t display as much emotion when you’re thinking and not speaking. Hand gestures and physical cues are clunky because you aren’t projecting any sound out into the world. And passersby remain clueless as to what their conversation is about.
Watching Mute Date is kind of a bizarre invasion of privacy. The setting invites you into the lives of two people lowering their walls and opening up to each other, but I was reminded at various points throughout the film that if I was actually in that park with them, I wouldn’t be able to hear what they were thinking. It’s not just narration over an event, it’s inner thoughts that can be as loud, quiet, kind, mean, open, or guarded as their owner chooses them to be.
The film is strikingly broken into three acts. My description is mostly limited to act one, which I found to be slow to start, but naturally built into a working relationship between Noah and Erica. Noah and Eric are stark opposites in demeanor and personality, but their “opposites attract” bond grows and blossoms. That is, until the technology reveals that like every seeming upgrade to life; social media, smart phones, or online shopping, nothing comes without sacrifice. I enjoyed the deeper delve into the technology in act two even more than the opening. I wish I could have said the same for the final act of the film.
While not what I would call a ‘twist,’ Mute Date shifts in tone for the final sequence of the film. Aspects of the final act did not work for me, which I won’t reveal with too much specificity so as not to spoil another’s experience. The film adds another character, whose addition clashes with the established back and forth we’ve grown accustomed to between Noah and Erica. It also weaves the story into a larger tapestry that I’m not sure it needed to do to be effective. I don’t know what kind of an ending I was looking for, to be honest, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was not the one for me.
It was to my great relief that despite my less than enthusiastic response to the ending, I was still very taken by the events leading up to it. Mute Date uses voice over as effectively as other films like Her and Molly’s Game. Kapfer and Tandilashvili are exquisite at making an unreal conceit come to life. Mute Date is an inventive drama that seems to mine its conceit for an entire franchise’s worth of facets in its brief runtime. Clarke’s direction is as steady and reliable as it was in Ramekin, but in venturing outside, he seems to have even better shot composition and creativity. I had a lot of fun with Mute Date, and I think most viewers will, too. Check out the trailer for Mute Date below. And if you haven’t seen it, check out Cody Clarke’s previous film, Ramekin. That trailer is linked below, as well!
Trailer for Mute Date: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u2EquFSj28
Trailer for Ramekin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QonrkVv0AbU
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Good review. Thanks for no spoilers.
While the third ‘act’ was a significant change in tone, it added a thought provoking focus on the impact of the technology.
Otherwise it would have just been a cute variation of a rom-com. With the shift in tone, it became much more.
Though I might have added a post scene 9 months later.