official description
Delving into the high-stakes world of appearances for which Los Angeles is infamous, Amazon Falls crafts a surprisingly intense and precise look at dream-chasers living at the margins of Hollywood. Populated with seemingly stereotypical characters whose inner depths are gradually revealed, Katrin Bowen’s clever first feature dons the guise of a B movie in telling the tale of Jana (April Telek in a pitch-perfect performance), a struggling actress who can only be described as a cross between Sally Kellerman and Dolly Parton.
This mid-life ingénue watched her career spiral downward after appearing in a semi-cult sexploitation film. Ironically, this dubious acting credit is the only thing that helps Jana land auditions. While pursuing her dream, she ekes out a meager living as a hostess in a gloomy Hollywood bar staffed with other struggling actresses. Among these is her friend, the younger, prettier Li (Anna Mae Routledge), whose audition with an allegedly famous director went far better than Jana’s.
But Jana can’t see any of this; in her mind she has already gotten a part, and she pushes that white lie to the point of jeopardizing her grip on reality. She refuses a dinner theatre gig that her friend and agent Margaret (lovingly portrayed by Festival favourite Gabrielle Rose) has landed for her, and she seems blind to her musician boyfriend’s drug addiction and infidelity. Eventually, heartache and professional disappointment lead Jana to one of the rich older gentlemen she knows from the bar. Is he a benefactor or a predator that smells her desperation?
Curry Hitchborn’s focused script provides no easy answers; instead, it probes the cost of the Hollywood dream in a society obsessed with celebrity. But beyond Jana’s surface glamour lies a genuine vulnerability, and this works as a metaphor for the film itself, where staggering truths ripple a glossy finish.
Martin Bilodeau
Principal Cast: April Telek, Anna Mae Routledge, William B. Davis, Zak Santiago, Gabrielle Rose
Producer: Katrin Bowen
Executive Producer: Darren Reiter
Cinematographer: Cliff Hokanson
Editor: Franco Pante
Sound: Paul Sharpe
Music: Step Carruthers
Production Designer: Erik Whittaker
Production Company: Purple Productions
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