Every year, countless directors make their directorial debuts offering new voices and perspectives, which have the power to leave a surprising impact on audiences with fresh takes and ideas. One director making their directorial debut in 2020 is Merland Hoxha, with his film The Departure, which follows a young couple as their plans to advance their relationship takes a side turn.
Nate (Grant Gunderson) gets offered a short term job in New York City, right after he and his girlfriend Jessica (Kendall Chappell) decide to move in with each other. Where the two plan to make it work for the short time long-distance, Nate grows paranoid and decides he needs to test Jessica. Convincing his friend John (Austin Lauer) to flirt with her and see if she will cheat. From a premise alone the film feels questionable, it is the execution of this plot that would make or break the film – and sadly led to the latter of the two options.
First with the positives. From a visual standpoint, The Departure without a doubt works. So many independent films are plagued with limited production quality, causing the final product to visibly look cheaper. But The Departure never suffers from this. Not just is the actual camera quality cinematic, but the cinematography itself from Ludovica Isidori and Wey Wang really makes the most of seemingly average sets. Constantly looking for dynamic ways to showcase the various sets and locations the film explores.
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The acting, while overall unremarkable, also has some moments where it shines. Some of the line delivery can be a bit rough at the start of most scenes, but when two actors like Kendall Chappell and Grant Gunderson are able to play off of each other they really do bring the best out of one another. There is legitimate chemistry between them. And while it does take a minute to get there, the dialogue starts to flow and leads to pretty decent performances, that sadly are then ruined by easily the biggest downfall to the film: the editing.
The Departure regretfully has to go down as one of the worst edited films in recent memory. Consistently the editing featured in the film from Juliette Edwards hinders any momentum the film is able to build. Simple fundamental skills like making dialogue flow from different takes and cutting audio from microphones when they brush against something are completely lost. Nearly every dialogue scene that features multiple takes are chopped together with unnatural pauses and brash transitions that immediately takes the audience out of the scenes, and makes the screenplay sound more unnatural and choppy than it actually is.
The audio especially though is questionably bad. Not only are the microphones used of a lesser quality, but there are multiple scenes where a character’s movement creates annoying and distracting sound, which easily could be edited out. These are simple things that many student films are able to avoid, yet The Departure never seems to figure out which is even more questionable considering Juliette Edwards is in no way a brand new editor. They have quite a bit of experience as both a main and assistant editor, including on shows like 13 Reasons Why, which despite suffering from its own many demons, features creative and strong editing.
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The story itself is also one that is tricky, when it comes to purpose and message. At no point, even at the end of the film, does it feel like the film really finds something interesting to say. It creates a relationship that fails to connect with audiences, due to the bland characters with very little personality, tests the relationship, and then ends without any thesis or emotional purpose.
The one area where it seems the film might be attempting to connect with audiences is when it tests the relationship. Which perhaps could have at least felt engaging if the audience cared about these characters in the slightest. Not only do the characters lack strong depth, but they are all extremely unlikable. The film gives no reason why we should wish for the relationship to survive, killing any stakes it tries to set up and ends up feeling empty.
The Departure is a hard film to truly judge. Especially as a directorial debut, it is hard to merit the quality of Merland Hoxha as a director considering the film is so hurt due to some of its technical aspects. The screenplay and performances feel choppy and inconsistent, perhaps as a result of this. It would have been nice to see more depth in the story itself, and given itself it a fighting chance to accomplish its goals.
