Not quite a short or a feature, Sara Driver’s long-lost 1981 production “You Are Not I” exists on some alternate plane that renders the distinction irrelevant. It’s more like a haunting cinematic journey that leads directly into its mentally disturbed protagonist’s head. “You Are Not I” adapts the Paul Bowles short story of the same name and turns it into a disorienting psychological experience where nobody’s sanity can be trusted, including that of the audience.
The entire 48 minutes that comprise “You Are Not I” take place from the perspective of Ethel (Suzanne Fletcher), a frightening head case whose main dialogue is mostly heard in voiceover. Shot in dreary black-and-white against the drab backdrop of suburban New Jersey, the minimal story finds Ethel wandering past a gruesome car accident buried in plumes of smoke. As hordes of firefighters scurry about, she happens upon the grim sight of bodies covered in sheets and takes the cryptic initiative to place rocks between their lips. That decision is an extension of the movie’s overall inscrutability, a status that demands repeat viewings.
Sara Driver (born December 15, 1955) is an American independent filmmaker from Westfield, New Jersey. A participant in the independent film scene that flourished in lower Manhattan from the late 1970s through the 1990s, she gained initial recognition as producer of two early films by Jim Jarmusch, Permanent Vacation (1980) and Stranger Than Paradise (1984). Driver has directed two feature films, Sleepwalk (1986) and When Pigs Fly (1993), as well as a notable short film, You Are Not I (1981), and a documentary, Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2018), on the young artist's pre-fame life in the burgeoning downtown New York arts scene before the city's massive changes through the 1980s. She served on the juries of various film festivals throughout the 2000s
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