“Test Pattern,” Shatara Michelle Ford’s directorial feature debut, deals with sexual assault in slight but effective ways. It’s a nano-budgeted indie that, despite some amateur-esque production values, manages to do so much with so little.
Clocking in at just 82-minutes, the film starts off as a sweet love story before delving into the bureaucratic hellhole of a U.S. health care system that doesn’t take care of its own. Evan (a miscast Will Brill), is an awkwardly sweet-natured, tattoo artist. Renesha (newcomer and star-in-the-making Brittany S. Hall) is a businesswoman living in a luxurious condo. They meet at a bar. This leads to a date at her apartment and soon after the film flashes forward as we see them living together in a lovely hipster shack of a home.
The drama hits when Renesha accompanies her friend Amber (Gail Bean) on a girl’s night out, it’s there that they meet two clad-suited, 30something businessmen, one of them date rapes Kenesha. The sexual assault prompts a panicky, but mostly in control, Evan dragging his girlfriend through the Texas’ hospital system in search of a rape kit. Easier said than done.
Frustrations come to a tilt as waiting times mount and hospital after hospital tells them they don’t deal with rape cases due to undersupplying and understaffing. Meanwhile, Renesha seems to have had enough of trying countless medical facilities, feeling trapped in a neverending nightmare of bureaucracy and chauvinism, she tells Evan to quit hospital-hopping by taking her home. He refuses to stop. But it is Renesha’s body, isn’t it? Who is he to claim ownership of what should be done to it?
Tackling racial and sexist policies and trying to fit these heavy topics into such a simple narrative structure, not to mention a budget of under a million dollars, can be a daunting task, but Ford succeeds in building the dread. She knows that it’s the small details that leave the biggest impact. The silences between the couple, powered by a sneakily strong performance from Hall, manages to sidestep victimhood cliches in favor of realism.
This is what trauma looks like, it’s not in the least bit cinematic, or outwardly shocking, instead it’s a creep-inducing feeling that slowly builds to eat at your every bone. Ford has a strong talent for mise-en-scène; the stilled compositions never intruding with the drama. She and Hall are talents to watch.
SCORE: B/B+