Movie Review: The People Garden - An Uneventful Tale

Genre: Drama

Director: Nadia Litz

Cast: Dree Hemingway, Pamela Anderson, Francois Arnaud, Jai West, and James Le Gros

Studio: Scythia Films

Runtime: 82 Minutes

Release: In Theaters September 13, 2016.

Rated: NR

Rating ★★★★★

The People Garden falls victim to the same trap many films of this caliber seem to do, messy execution. Although the opening is intriguing, that it tells you little of what to expect, it grabs your attention. As The People Garden progresses, it seems to lose focus, and by extension, your attention. It’s a shame because there is the potential for a great film, but what we get is a forgettable one.

The People Garden, written and directed by Nadia Litz, follows Sweetpea (Dree Hemingway) as she travels to Japan to break up with with her rockstar boyfriend Jamie (Francois Arnaud). When she discovers that he’s gone missing in a mysterious forest, she hunts for him, worrying that he might be dead.

The biggest praise I can give The People Garden is its cinematography. There are some truly gorgeous scenes on display here. The first 20 minutes perfectly showcases showcase Litz’s talent behind the camera as she lets allows the visual to tell the story with barely any dialogue. In fact, I would have almost preferred the choice of it had The People Garden been a silent film due to some questionable dialogue choices.

The dialogue ranges from passable to just plain unnatural. One scene, involving a character’s possible affair, took me completely out of the movie, and making me think, “’No normal adult speaks like this.’” Other scenes make the movie feel like it was written five minutes before filming. The acting helps sell some of this dialogue, specifically Hemingway as Sweetpea. She makes her character seem believable, making it easy to truly care about Sweetpea as she tries to find Jamie her boyfriend. There are a few moments where Hemingway’s character is under great emotional stress and she sells this flawlessly. I was truly impressed by her performance.

Pamela Anderson as Signe, a model who knows Jamie, is the film’s biggest misstep in terms of casting. Not only does she have minimal screen time, Anderson seems out of place. Instead of playing a character, it seems like she showed up on set one day and started reading lines off a script.

The biggest sin The People Garden commits though is that it’s just boring. The film loses steam quickly and it never gains it back. Events happen, but there’s no build-up towards them and they leave no impact. At only 82 minutes, The People Garden feels twice that long with a plot that feels like it was stretched out to last the length of a full movie. The ending also feels abrupt, as if Litz didn’t know how to end it so she decided to stop at the last plot point she had written.

The People Garden showcases a terrific performance by Hemingway and some truly beautiful camerawork by Litz but those alone can’t save the film from being an uneventful snooze. You’re better off skipping The People Garden.

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Dustin Kogler

Professional amateur movie watcher. Dustin is a laid-back nerd who loves discussing pop culture. He loves listening to 80s music, playing video games and watching netflix all day. He's pretty sarcastic and if you tell him your favorite movie he can tell you why you're wrong.