Benjamin Dickinson’s indie comedy Creative Control uses luminous black-and-white cinematography to tell a New York story of two young, white advertising hipsters and the women they cheat on. David, an account executive at a Brooklyn ad agency, feels himself pulling away from his yoga-instructor wife, Juliette, and falling in love with Sophie, the 18-year-old costumer who’s currently sleeping with his randy photographer pal, Wim. There’s also a trendy tech angle: as the movie opens, David lands his company the launch campaign for Augmenta, a new brand of “augmented reality” smart glasses, and in testing out the product, he learns how to incorporate his video capture of Sophie into a lifelike avatar that crawls right onto his lap.
Creative Control evokes Manhattan most strongly in the tangled friendship between David and Wim (Dan Gill), an easygoing hedonist reminiscent of the philandering husband Michael Murphy plays in the Allen movie. A fashion photographer, Wim has a steady relationship with Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen) but also gets some on the side with Casey, a hard-partying model he first humiliates during a photo shoot and then brings to heel later. David is sworn to silence about this affair, though Wim persists in snapping cell-phone images of his sexual conquests and e-mailing them to his pal. “You live in a movie,” David tells him enviously. Sitting in a darkened room at a wild party, Wim shoots video of Casey going down on him, while in a top corner of the frame, a drunken David tries to flirt with an attractive woman but suddenly vomits on her. Of course, Wim sends this file to David as well.
Directed by Benjamin Dickinson
Dickinson screenings on Fri 3/18 and Sat 3/19, 7:15 and 9:45 PM Music Box 3733 N. Southport 773-871-6604musicboxtheatre.com $10
