Reviewed by Tim Wong

AS AN established filmmaker backing the DV revolution, Richard Linklater has certainly put much of that advocacy into practice, particularly with 2001's Waking Life, utilising the throwaway immediacy of the digital format to initiate a wonderfully lucid brand of animated existentialism. Tape was made almost impulsively the same year, gathering a DV camera, three actors and a tailored script to a faceless motel room for 90 minutes of conversational theatrics.


There are obvious limitations with such a reductive scenario, but it's very resourceful filmmaking all the same. Vince (Ethan Hawke), a part-time fire fighter/full-time dope dealer, travels to small town Middle America to attend a film festival screening of school friend Jon's (Robert Sean Leonard) latest feature. The pretentiously superior Jon arrives at Vince's half-trashed motel room, where they talk, reminisce and tease each other like old friends do. The conversation resurfaces a third party, Amy (Uma Thurman), a former high school "relationship" for both friends, who also happens to live in the area. It's all really designed to erupt in a ménage à trios of spitefulness and manipulation, where each point of the triangle takes turns bullying, victimising and submitting to one another. Makes for some dramatic turns, and for the most part, resembles something of a purposeful narrative that we can actually invest in.

Essentially an hour-and-a-half conversational piece that would seem better conceptualised for the stage (it is based on Stephen Belber's play), Linklater does well with the often-difficult transition. The dialogue, although somewhat formulated, holds purpose in maintaining some sort of dependable plot for us to grasp on to; otherwise, we'd just feel like uncomfortable voyeurs to a domestic dispute. The setting itself is gaudy and claustrophobic, performing as sort of a human cage for the three-piece acting trio to break out of. Maryse Alberti's camera unfortunately can't do the same, already having covered every nook, cranny and possible vantage point in the first half-hour; at least it doesn't look like another Dogme film.

For all its containment, Tape is a liberating exercise more than anything; there's a certain emancipation in reducing one's options to a bare minimum, which the film proudly displays with an off-the-cuff manner, despite operating within a structured three-act premise. Ultimately, Tape's role is best remembered as a stand-alone example to the budding filmmakers of this world of what is possible simply with a camera, actors and a location. It may not always be pretty, but in instances like this, sometimes it's just the doing that really counts.