Julian L. Goldberger's debut feature is a ethereal portrait of a teenage boy busted out of reform school with nowhere to go.
Trans is set in south Florida, where the Everglades are encroached upon by a small town containing only a gas station, a laundromat, a supermarket, and a bus depot set along a highway. This is the place that's home to Ryan Kazinski (Ryan Daugherty), who, in his daydreams, is a space alien inhabiting a human body until he figures out what he was sent here to do.
What's most remarkable about Trans is how faithfully it represents Ryan's consciousness. It shifts between fantasy and woozy details of the outside world: sunlight shining on an open field, the beat-up silk on an ear of corn, the word "violation" displayed inside a parking meter.
We don't know what landed Ryan in reform school, which is a source of anxiety for the viewer. He appears gentle, guileless, and impulse, his attention span too fragmented to calculate the consequences of his actions. With only a month left on his sentence, he goes on the lam; instead of heading out of state, he hangs around to see his brother and then to rescue a dog from the pound. He just can't stay focused on self-protection. We understand, better than he, how dire his situation is, which makes the film particularly painful.
Goldberger scatters a series of fragmentary scenes that map Ryan's 48 hours flight to freedom. Shot with a handheld camera and occasionally rendered more dreamlike with slow or high-speed motion, the scenes are less dramatic interactions than pieces of uncomfortable documentation. Daugherty, who had never acted before, us in no way remarkable except when his eyes become rapt or when they seem to turn totally inward. It's his amateur presence and the presence of other local talent gives the film much of its immediacy and authenticity.
The main flaw with Trans is in its pacing. It never feels like it's moving forward quick enough. After the first half an hour, the energy of the escape is gone. Ryan never feels like he is in danger.
7/10
