Rating: MA 15+
Starring: Robin Greenspan, Lacie Harmon
Director: Lee Friedlander
Producer: Gina G. Goff, Laura Kellam, Sean McVity
Distributor: Force Entertainment

Girl Play tells the story of Robin (played by Robin Greenspan), who has been married to her girlfriend for six years, and Lacie (played by Lacie Harmon), someone who has never been in a long term relationship. They are both cast to play lesbian lovers in a Los Angeles stage play. Innocently, the stage director, Gabriel (played by a very funny Dom DeLouise) guides the actresses through a the rehearsals where he coaxes the intimacy out of each performer. Soon, Robin and Lacie find themselves increasingly attracted to each other and overcome with desire. The film largely revolves around the two trying to figure out if these feelings have been created to better the performance of the play, or are feelings of true love.

Girl Play is the debut for writer/actors Robin Greenspan and Lacie Harmon, who both come from a stand-up comedy background and have largely little or no experience in either acting or writing for film. This should be the first warning sign but Greenspan and Harmon do not disappoint with their acting. The storyline is also decent, running along traditional love story lines that anyone can identify with. It’s nothing special but the art of good storytelling can make a basic story into a great one. Greenspan and Harmon do well here. While the story behind Girl Play, which is largely based on the personal experiences of Greenspan and Harmon, is neither disappointing nor particularly dynamic, the treatment is nothing short of atrocious.

While I can appreciate this film being a low budget feature, it does not excuse the poor cinematic experience. Most of Girl Play consists of monologues delivered by either Greenspan or Harmon straight to camera or as voice-over with very little break in-between. What gap there is in the machine-gun dialogue delivery is dotted with unconsidered music courtesy of Laura Karman. I believe that Greenspan and Harmon wrote Girl Play as a stage play before it was made a screenplay. Girl Play comes across visually like someone took a video camera to the stage performance.

Girl Play is also the first feature-length outing for director Lee Friedlander, and her inexperience shows. Uncomfortably tight framing is intermixed with slow motion effects, combined with aforementioned unconsidered musical score and flashback sequences. All of which become very tiresome within the first 15 minutes.

This is where Girl Play really disappoints because I was enjoying the story but the cinematographic experience was well below par. Quite possibly, the experience would have been better had I shut my eyes and just listened to the monologues of Greenspan and Harmon which go to tell 95% of the story. Very little is left to visual storytelling, and I am left thinking what the point was of turning this into a movie.