Ham on Rye

HAM ON RYE   **1/2

Tyler Taormina  

2019

IDEA:  In a typical American suburb, a group of teens prepares nervously for a coming-of-age rite that could determine the course of their lives.

BLURB:  Despite what we’re often led to believe, there is no moment of grand transformation or epiphany delimiting youth from adulthood. Things don’t suddenly become clearer. Teleological ideals of progress and independence mostly don’t take hold; stripped of the provincial early-life structures of school and the family unit, we’re cast adrift, waiting for gratification that never seems to come. This is the disillusioned post-adolescent realization arrived at by Ham on Rye, an anti-coming-of-age film in which the typical narrative expectations of self-actualization are swiftly and rudely upended, leaving its characters trapped instead in an existential torpor. Although askew from the start - Taormina is highly adept at using too-close, off-center compositions and elliptical edits to generate a quotidian surrealism - the film achieves its most startling effect in the transition from its first to second half. Its initial, peppy teen-movie overtures are expelled like air from a rapidly deflating balloon, and what we’re left with is a becalmed anti-climax, a ghost story of lost youth. While Ham on Rye is a tonally daring and formally auspicious debut, it’s also perhaps abstracted to a fault. The casualties here are the characters, who, lacking much individuation or development, feel more like the cynical props of a concept, and less like nuanced, agential human beings. Such is the deadpan nihilism of Taormina’s film. We have careless fun as kids, we grow up, we go through arbitrary social rituals, and we wonder when, if ever, it will make sense.