Brew Views: An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

Like a lovesick diary entry, Terence Nance's feature debut, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, loops from confession to self-doubt to blind infatuation. The film is a blend of documentary and narrative, detailing Nance's occasionally blissful and often fraught relationship with his ideal(ized) woman. The woman isn't named here, but she's Nance's real-life friend and sometimes lover Namik Minter, and in the film she both plays herself and becomes a character in Nance's retelling. "It's like my life put on screen to your music," Minter says. But Nance prevents the film from devolving into a puddle of self-indulgence by lacing his voice-over with blues recordings and cutting in vivid animated sequences, playful doodles and dreamlike multimedia collages. Nance and Minter's relationship might be tentative, but the film's construction is wondrously go-for-broke.

1. Showing at: Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 and 9:30 pm Saturday, 2:30 and 4:30 pm Sunday, June 8-9.
2. Best paired with: Occidental Cloudy Summer Kolsch.
3. Also showing: Silver Linings Playbook (Laurelhurst Theater).

WWeek 2015