Santa Fe Independent Film Festival: ‘International Falls’ Review

In filmmaker Amber McGinnis' International Falls, a comedy veteran named Tim Fletcher and closet comedian Dee Williamson remind us of the perils of living inauthentically. Rob Huebel (Do You Want to See a Dead Body?) plays Fletcher, an end-of-the-line comic arriving in an end-of-the-line town on Minnesota's border with Canada. Rachel Harris (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) is Dee, the hotel desk clerk who suspects standup comedy might give her the voice she craves to speak out against a life that is slowly suffocating her.

Harris and Huebel have an easy onscreen rapport that begins during check-in when she tells him that he's edgy—edgy like Steve Guttenberg. Dee is unhappily stuck in a marriage on life support while Tim is deeply sad; obviously they hit it off.

But for a film about a couple of people enamored with comedy, International Falls is not a laugh fest. Thomas Ward's script is in capable hands with McGinnis and her cast, including SNL and Weeds alum Kevin Nealon and Matthew Glave (The Wedding Singer's Glenn Guglia). There are some genuinely funny moments among some really hard ones.

Huebel's Fletcher has decided the hotel-bar-weekend-headliner gig will be his last. He's not a great comic—and we see it in his final, wincing performance—but his yearning for connection, for authenticity, is real, and the stuff that makes up what we love about great standup comics. Talking to Dee after his last set, he lays himself bare, giving her the perspective he could have and should have used in his life on stage.

This is the first feature-length film for McGinnis, who has a self-professed mission of telling "stories to help create a more empathetic world." She largely succeeds.

8
+Harris; Huebel's monologue about comedy; easy dialogue
-Bogs a little in the middle; inconsistent Minnesotan accents, odd Nealon cameo

International Falls
Directed by McGinnis
With Harris and Huebel
Santa Fe Independent Film Festival
Jean Cocteau Cinema, NR, 93 min.