Losing Ground (1982)

A Quiet Film That's Louder Than It Lets On - Losing Ground review by griggs

Kathleen Collins wrote and directed this back in 1982, and Seret Scott plays Sara, a professor trying to think her way through a feeling she can't quite name. The marriage at the centre is the strongest thread — Victor's a painter who can't stay faithful, and the two of them drift further apart the less either bothers explaining themselves. Then Sara heads off to shoot a student film and meets a co-star who's basically Victor's mirror image: smart-talking, a bit unreadable, and playing a character who cheats on her too — same trouble, different set.

Duane Jones plays that co-star, and it's what sent me down a metal rabbit hole. He also stars in Ganja and Hess, an experimental vampire film written and directed nine years earlier, in 1973, by Bill Gunn — who plays Victor here. A completely different genre, but there's a shared rhythm: scenes hold something back, then the next one pays it off. And it's hard not to notice both films came from Black writers, directors and casts working largely outside the industry's usual funding and distribution channels, which probably explains why neither got its due at the time.

It's a real shame Collins didn't live to see this land the way it should have. Sara clearly wants to be her own person — sharp, sure of herself, caught between two entirely different ways of thinking about the world. And the last ten minutes turn a corner I honestly didn't see coming.

A quiet film that's louder than it lets on.