Glasgow Film Festival 2015: The Ninth Cloud
For every individual of genuine artistic vision, there are great crowds of those who simply want to claim the title of 'artist', don the costume and enjoy the lifestyle. The Ninth Cloud is largely about these people.
Set in a bohemian fringe of 90s London, Jane Spencer's film tells the story of Zena (Megan Maczko) and her search for truth and beauty amid the grime and grind of everyday life. A wide-eyed Amélie prone to high-flying philosophical monologues, both internal and external, Zena falls in with an odd group of artistic types prone to spending a lot more time talking about art than making it. While she and her friends are exactly the type of quirky oddballs you'd expect to find in an indie comedy, Spencer cleverly deconstructs the genre by playing it out in a lo-fi, naturalistic way that highlights their absurdity – cute one-liners and starry gazes are endearing with the right music and editing, but strip these things away and the individuals in question start to look either painfully pretentious or just a little unhinged.