Hal Hartley makes movies that take place resolutely in the real world”, wrote Roger Ebert, “Insisting on their flat, realistic dialogue and deadpan characters even while the storyline takes flight for the far shores of fancy.” Amateur’s self-consciously zany momentum is undercut by the brutality of the violence that propels the plot, and which threatens to overwhelm the trio as they race against the inevitable.

The three characters are amateurs in different ways: Isabelle because of her cloistered convent life, Thomas due to his brain injury, and Sofia because of Thomas’s manipulation in her early years. Hartley himself said of his first feature film, The Unbelievable Truth (included in season seven of TANKtv, On Verisimilitude) that he “cringes” when he looks back: “I should not have been that innocent by that point. No, and in any event it’s impossible. You can’t return to innocence.” The amateur might risk embarrassment, but it’s a small price to pay for clarity of vision and creative buoyancy. ◉