Show Me

A pair of squeegee kids carjack a wealthy woman and force her to take them to her tranquil cottage in the country. In all honesty, the premise of Show Me sounds lame, but the end result is something much greater than its plot.

Katherine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) and Kett Turton play the squeegee kids in question. Jenna and Jackson are troubled teen siblings with a past that is never completely spelled out. They’re in trouble, seem to have a deep love for one another – at least by their limited experience of what love really is – and that’s all director/writer Cassandra Nicolau wants you to know about them.

Like Jenna and Jackson, Sarah (Michelle Nolden) has love troubles as well. But Sarah’s got it all materialistically thinking, so everything has to be okay – right? Well, as the trio find out when Sarah is kidnapped love hurts whether you’re rich or poor. Male or female, straight or gay for that matter. The more time the trio spends together, the more they realize that they’re all very similar.

Show Me centers around the power struggle between the capture and the kidnappers. At first Sarah is very much in the victim mode. She’s willing to get Jenna and Jackson whatever they want just as long as she can go on her merry way, collect the insurance and go on with her life as normal. When that doesn’t work, she turns up the sexual tension, trying to appeal to a different side of the siblings’ sensibilities. Finally, there’s the revelation of love. As complicated as the emotion is, it’s a damn powerful one. One, in this case, that shifts Show Me from a pretty standard kidnapping film to one that explores real and often ignored emotions.

This film is subtle in that the meanings of revelations just sort of sneak up on you. There’s few “big” scenes that bring it all together and granted there are several scenes that feel overly done and contrived – particularly in the beginning and end of the film.

Show Me ultimately takes a familiar scenario – the kidnapping – and turns it just sideways enough to make it worthwhile. The three leads are all convincing in the changes their characters make over the course of the film. The dialogue is often sharp and the West Coast scenery is always welcome. However, what really stands out is the subtlety of the script as things emerge and the film’s quiet approach in the big scenes just outside the action.

While I was a little apprehensive in Show Me‘s opening act, by the end I was thoroughly into it all.