QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN

TikTok is going to change the way movies are watched and made. And Carole & Grey, a film conceived of in 45 clips meant for the easily digestible TikTok, is the first film to fully embrace the coming change. The film’s director and leading man, Jon Bass (as Grey), is in a heavy of depressive spell following a nasty breakup and goes on his first major outing post-breakup to retrieve his shared dog from his ex-girlfriend’s house on the other side of New York City. His best friend, the rarely serious and deeply loving Carole (Mary Wiseman), a lesbian with a brand new stalker-turned-girlfriend, joins him and pushes him back into his old self along the way.

The entirety of the film intriguingly uses a portrait aspect ratio (9:16) that gives NYC a new and even more daunting look while also constricting Grey’s emotional world. Shot on convenient smartphone cameras, Bass and his team of four cinematographers use the verticality creatively throughout and constantly find new angles that never seem to be the most typical or obvious choice for a shot type, though the 9:16 ratio does change the way blocking looks tremendously and there is no way to avoid that. Even the acting and comedy were designed for the reel-sharing social media app with the acting talent uses the same staged not-staged style that dominates Instagram and TikTok both. One’s ability to appreciate Carole & Grey, like it or hate it, will be irreversibly tied to their tolerance for TikTok aesthetics.

As easy as their task sounds, Carole & Grey is a textbook case of the Hero’s Journey, armed with a mysterious Lithuanian woman who is probably a spy, Yoyo gangs, a witch with teleportation abilities in Central Park, and Steve Buscemi as a shapeshifting and self-styled therapist. Somehow this all feels plausible in their NYC, slightly distinguished from the Big Apple of real life through its lack of color. A lot happens in only one hour and 6 minutes, but that’s part of the TikTok game. There is no time for slowing down when each reel needs to be watchable in its own right.

It also has a cheeky side. Where one might expect the usual anti-copyright warning, this rebellious film puts a message, coded in the same green and white as the typical FBI warnings, stating “Federal law has nothing to do with this movie. Reproduce, redistribute, and exhibit this wherever and to whomever you want.” Though, you can’t find it on TikTok at the moment. The account has been made private, presumably for festival and distribution-related reasons.

The only things not-TikToky about it are the cast, which features a few recognisable faces and even a few cameos from the likes of Daniel Radcliffe and Greta Gerwig, and its preference for black and white cinematography—the latter being difficult to make sense of beyond its declawing effect on NYC. Everything is less distracting and more harmless in black and white. It does feel counterintuitive to the idea of a TikTok movie though: by removing colour, the filmmakers also remove their leverage with any algorithms. TikTok demands instant gratification and maximum sensory overload. The black and white diffuses this, and it does so without any commentary or hostility to that social media trend.

Carole & Grey premiered in the Rebels with a Cause section of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. Also showing in the 24th edition of REC Tarragona.