Let me take you back to a mystical land called the early 1990s. It was a time of grunge music, David Lynch television shows and independent films shot on 16mm about young (usually) artists doing their thing. Surrogate Valentine is not shot on 16mm but it is in black & white and will be a blast of nostalgia for anyone who cut their teeth on the relationship dramedies from defunct outlets like October Films and Fine Line Features.
The picture is about a San Francisco singer-songwriter named Goh Nakamura and just happens to be written and starring Goh Nakamura, a San Francisco singer-songwriter. He's gigging, interacting with his Facebook fans, trying to save dough for a studio session and figuring out how to expand his sales reach. He has a friend (ex-lover?) who is a filmmaker and has secured a well-known TV actor to play her lead. Goh is tasked with teaching him to play guitar and has just a few days to do it.
That's more than enough of a ticking clock to get this story rolling. The actor, played by Chad Stoops, is a bit of a douche, but a well-meaning douche. As he tags along with Goh on his gigs to LA and Seattle, there are buddy/bromance moments taken from the Hollywood playbook, but dialed down to a quiet, low-fi setting. (In an act of aesthetic solidarity, it should be noted that Nakamura is primarily an acoustic performer.)
It should come as no surprise that the two end up becoming friends and aid one another, as best they can, in life and love. Goh is trapped in the friend zone with a longtime pal played by Lynn Chenn, and Stoops is too egocentric to see any issue with his TV character being in a coma all last season.
I have no specific beef with the new crop of extreme low budget films oftentimes referred to as mumblecore. I do think, however, it is a song that's been played to death. Surrogate Valentine is decidedly not a mumblecore film. Character-driven, yes. Navel-gazing, no. Despite its small budget, it does not shrug-off clean filmmaking craft in the service of being intentionally raw. Put bluntly, unlike others I won't name, if Surrogate Valentine director Dave Boyle were given a budget and a Hollywood job, I think he has the skillset to not make a fool of himself. Maybe check this movie out so you can say you have his early EPs.
