SXSW Film Reviews
By Courtney Fitzgerald, Fri., March 18, 2005
Waterborne
D: Ben Rekhi; with Christopher Masterson, Jake Muxworthy, Ajay Naidu, Magiena Tovah, Shabana Azmi, Jon Gries
Narrative Feature Competition
Even Los Angeles doesn't deserve the threat of bioterrorism. Their air supply's gone to smog already. In Waterborne, writer-director Rekhi uses jump-cut DV to envision what the panic from America's next and even more insidious threat could look like – a silent attack on L.A.'s water supply. The cast of characters get true with their colors in intersecting stories involving every side of the Homeland Security coin: a Muslim grocery store owner, her son, his blonde girlfriend, a military family, and a couple of Abercrombies perfectly willing to trade good pot for a bottle of H2O. Fear could be the ultimate revealer of personality. How does each side deal? If your skin's on the dark side, you might have to exercise irony and wear an American flag T-shirt just to feel safe. But turban or no turban, everybody's human. None of us are camels. We're all gonna get thirsty.Waterborne was a runner-up among the Audience Awards.
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, 6:45pm
