Silver Tongues

Run Time: 88 minutes
Directed by: Simon Arthur
Florida Film Festival screenings:
April 11 at 7:00pm and April 13 at 9:30pm
Dropps: 8.5/10

Some people are mean to others just because they are self-conscious themselves. Those people you easily avoid because they are usually easy to see coming or you learn about them quickly. But what about those few that know how to get inside your head, send it spinning and then disappear? These are the kind of characters that Simon Arthur created for his feature film Silver Tongues.
The film is about a pair of lovers that move from place to place creating a new identity in each place. While in each of these places they create a new story or situation that shakes the stability the people they come into contact with. Can these two keep going with their manipulative ways without repercussions?
As a first feature it has set the bar high for the film’s writer director Simon Arthur. Even though this is Simon’s first feature length film he also has two shorts under his belt. Rebel Song, which took home a Director’s Award for Cinematography at the 2008 Woods Hole Festival, is about three souls that “play out their broken lives among the swaying trees, singing hymns of love lust and murder”[1]. Arthur even adapted his feature from his own short film aptly named Silver Tongues and won two awards for the short during 2008, a trophy at the Westchester Film Festival and a festival prize at the Poppy Jasper Film Festival.
The two lead characters in the film are Gerry and Joan played by Lee Tergesen and Enid Graham. Lee Tergesen is well known for his roles as Evan “Scribe” Wright in HBO’s mini series Generation Kill, Tobias Beecher in the HBO series Oz and recently he has appeared on the show Army Wives. Of the characters that Tergesen has played it is possible that Tobias probably helped him with getting into Gerry’s skin. He is perfect as Gerry, a man that always keeps you guessing what he will do next. It is even frightening how much joy he appears to have behind all of the antics he carries out in the mindset of the character.
Enid Graham has worked in different projects from bit parts in Oz and The Good Wife to parts in The Interpreter and Blue Valentine. As Joan, Gerry’s “partner in crime”, she is magnificent. You aren’t sure how she feels or actually who she is until the end of the film. Tergesen and her have a great chemistry between which helps with the mind-blowing ending of the film.
Even though the characters in the film aren’t the kind of people you want to root for, they keep you watching. You want to see their next antic, if they ever get their just deserts or just want to know how the story will end. This is a must see film that you wouldn’t regret paying for at all. Many viewers from this year’s Slamdance Film Festival giving it the Audience Sparky Award for Best Narrative Film can’t be wrong.

-Ashlyn Williams