Funded by Kansas City's local arts project space, Grand Arts, Nakadate came from New York to film the movie in Kansas City and employed local, amateur, and first-time actors. To cast these stars, Nakadate held open casting calls at the Kansas City Art Institute.
After the excitement of familiar sites (notably, a long car ride down Broadway) and faces, the audience is faced with an eerily quiet film that does not thrive off verbosity but instead off human interaction. The film mirrors the style of Harmony Korine's films, Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy , in which the plot is not linear but skips from varying vignettes depicting the fictional characters' lives.
Centered around the solitary lives of distantly connected young women, Stay the Same Never Change invites the viewer into the loneliness of the characters and their desperate attempts to find affection from an inaccessible source.
Likewise, the audience cringes as the connections they attempt to foster with the world around them result in awkward exchanges and, ultimately, failure. Each character's story is slowly unwound, displaying his or her fragility and anguish. This is done in a way that the audience identifies with the seemingly psychotic actions of the characters, to which they say, "I have been that girl."
Though the film, at points, feels like it is trying too hard to be estranged, the lives of the young women carry the film forward. This film tastefully captures a time in a girl's life when her summer knees no longer carry a child's gate, but have not yet attained the feminine stride of a woman. It also exposes the crimes of men who want to corrupt the beauty of this time.
Ultimately, Stay the Same Never Change is a critique of the depraved state of our society in which depression rules and suicide runs rampant. The film shows that despite the attempts to escape our solitude, we remain alone, unable to forge meaningful relationships with the rest of the lonely souls that surround us.
  |
Copyright 2008 Metropolitan Community College