Rich Interior Lives opens with three men holding down young Bobby (Kai Enzo), as he writhes and struggles on the floor. This is less a medical than a spiritual intervention, as a man (Parker Shook) approaches and challenges Bobby to “commit to change… commit to light… commit to casting those weights aside one by one” in order to escape the controlling grip of Daddy and “to live the life God wants for you.” Yet as he invites Bobby to “get up”, it is now this man who (literally) holds Bobby down, so that these words of supposed inspirational encouragement come with a clear element of cruelty and taunting.
That man is pastor Colton Eugene Wayne, head of a megachurch and a “misanthropic, mean-spirited, ultra-conservative dolt” who bullies, and administers gay conversion therapy to, the most vulnerable members of his congregation/cult. These are not even the least attractive of Colt’s characteristics. For Colt is also arrogant, sneering, and not even subtle in his undermining of anyone whose company he keeps. And he has also, as he has got older, let himself go: a nerdy, pudgy, dull man with a weedy moustache, beady eyes and a “lump of dough physique”, full of vitriol and vague menace. It is hard to see why “good Christian girl” Mary (Teresa Byrne), obviously out of his league, has agreed to marry him – and it is even harder to see what Dana (Kei’la Ryan), a childhood friend and neighbour of Colt’s who has invited the couple over for dinner and is (barely) dressed to seduce, sees in him. Even when he is rude to her face, she is practically throwing herself at Colt.
“How am I the bad guy here? I saved this woman’s life,” Colt tells Mary before they go in. Indeed the whole reason – at least ostensibly – that they are visiting Dana is so that she can thank Colt, and Colt seems to revel both in being the centre of attention as Dana’s hero, and in the friction that Dana’s very forward sexuality is creating with Mary, who has not once had pre-marital relations with her fiancé. Much as, in the prologue, Colt’s salvationist practices also seemed sinister, there are contradictions here. Colt may profess open scorn for Dana, yet he ogles her openly enough for his bride-to-be to notice, and creepily sniffs in secret the underwear that Dana has casually left in the bathroom. Nonetheless, even as Dana flirtatiously manoeuvres towards serving up herself to Colt for the evening’s dessert menu, Colt keeps pushing her away.
There are also, it will emerge, contradictions between Colt’s past and present. Over the course of the evening, Dana will tell scatty stories of how out-of-shape Colt has saved her life not once but three times with speed, strength and agility, while her brother Logan (Gregory Shelby), who was once Colt’s best friend and team mate in high school, will tell his own resentful stories of Colt’s one-time – and now rather improbable – sporting prowess, success with women and surreally high grades. There is also an anecdote about Colt getting accidentally shot in a hunting accident, and walking away from the scene unscathed.
It is hard to reconcile the Colt in these stories with the man today – the kind of anonymous, mildly unpleasant middle-aged schlub whom you would barely notice let alone care to meet. Yet even as this evening revolves around Colt, the other three engage in behaviours inconsistent with their images, and similarly seem to be hiding things. It might be said that they are all concealing rich interior lives which will be gradually revealed over this dysfunctional dinner party, where callous betrayals, illicit desires, bitter jealousies and grand ambitions are laid out, one by one, on the table.
There is a big surprise (or ‘surp-wise’, as Dana insists on pronouncing it) in store at the end of this evening – the kind of turnaround that shifts paradigms and mutates genres (and that is utterly spoilt by the one-sentence synopses on IMDb or Tubi) — but before that, the dinner party setting enables big ideas to be confined to a small cast, a low budget and a single location (with the odd handdrawn insert), while allowing for table talk on the issues that divide not only these four diners, but much of America. For Ken Whiting’s debut feature, written by Andrew Bonazelli, pits faith against atheism, right against left, abstension against indulgence, conservatism against progressivism – and yet the different poles of these arguments are cynically united by the base essentials of human greed, vice, lust and ego that supersede all other values.
strap: Ken Whiting’s low-budget yet super-charged satire dines out on the petty hypocrisies, political polarities and power games that divide America
© Anton Bitel
