‘Invention' Review: Patent Pensive
'Invention' is the sort of D.I.Y. project that's tough not to admire, even if its aims remain stubbornly private. This strange, personal movie is a mind meld between the experimental filmmaker Courtney Stephens ('Terra Femme') and the actress Callie Hernandez ('Alien: Covenant'). Stephens is credited as director, while the two share a 'film by' credit.
Hernandez plays a barely disguised version of herself, 'Carrie Fernandez,' who has just lost her father and is now contending with the logistics. The father character, inspired by Hernandez's own dad, trained as a doctor but later turned to hawking crackpot treatments. He also had a 'different' way of handling personal finances, an executor (James N. Kienitz Wilkins) tactfully reminds Carrie. For a start, he conducted business under multiple names.
Carrie's father has bequeathed her the patent for an 'electromagnetic healing device,' a contraption that we're told the Food and Drug Administration has left in legal limbo. Much of 'Invention' consists of scenes between Carrie and her father's associates as she weighs whether the machine was legit — and what to do about it even if it was. 'Did you ever use it?' she asks one of the investors (Tony Torn). 'Ah, no,' he replies. 'I got a stent.'
Video clips of Hernandez's real father pitching treatments on TV and theorizing on how 'cells are like your cellphone' are interspersed throughout. The dialogue and the imagery allude to transcendental writers. ('Invention' was shot on 16-millimeter film in Massachusetts.) Periodically, Stephens will cut to moments in which she and the actors break the fourth wall. Whether these meta elements should mean much to those who weren't involved may be beside the point. 'Invention' is committed to finding its own wavelength.
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