SXSW Film Reviews

Girl Walk // All Day

SXSW's classification of this contagious feel-good film as "Documentary/Musical" was the first clue that we were in for something different. Yet the official description, as a "feature-length dance music video," doesn't quite do it justice either. Anne Marsen, John Doyle, and Daisuke Omiya are intrepid purveyors of good will as they dance through New York City's public spaces, engaging delighted and sometimes repelled strangers, all to the bottomless emotional well of sampling wizard Girl Talk's ardent mash notes. "Shiny Happy People" eye-rolling aside, whether you call this a film or a church service, the nonactor casting, editing, direction, and cinematography are just a handful of mature production elements at work here. Never has an audience-financed love letter to New York's urbanscape been photographed more wistfully. At the Friday night premiere, a cast member explained to the audience as it filed out into the rain for a sparkler dance party, "the suggestion is how we utilize and evolve our public spaces in new ways, and how we regard each other there." The suggestion was clear in the haze of sparkler smoke: Police arrived, and they laughed when revelers yelled, "If you're a cop, you'd better dance!"