Tape (2001)
(On Cable TV, May 2020) Part of the reason why I’ve warmed up considerably to Richard Linklater over the past few years has been to recognize that he’s very much an experimentalist—his films are rarely the same, and he has messed with enough unusual tones and structures that we can even see him as a playful filmmaker. In that vein, Tape makes perfect sense—it’s a one-location, three-character, real-time drama shot on videotape (although, thankfully, not from a fixed viewpoint). Based on a play, it watches as three “friends” get together in a hotel room, past secrets are revealed, and confessions are extracted. The image quality, having been filmed on a turn-of-the-century video camera, is nothing short of atrocious — but the intensity of the drama is high and the formal experimentation of the film is interesting. It’s clearly a formalist low-budget experiment, but one that’s somewhat successful (although sometimes better listened to rather than watched). Linklater stalwart Ethan Hawke stars, with Uma Thurman delivering a stripped-down dramatic performance alongside Robert Sean Leonard to complete the cast. As with most theatre-based dramas, the first half sets up the conflicts and the second half detonates them, with plenty of triggers, reversals and revelations. Tape, for all of its self-imposed limitations, certainly has an interest that goes beyond the formalist experiment.