Elizabeth Blue

There's one scene early on in Vincent Sabella's feature debut, "Elizabeth Blue," in which the titular protagonist (Anna Schafer) meets with a new psychiatrist. She is diagnosed with schizophrenia and has just been released from a hospital. When Elizabeth apologizes for her symptoms interrupting their first session, the compassionate Dr. Bowman (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) attempts to comfort her: "Mental illness doesn't need to be treated like a dirty secret," he says.

After moving in with her new fianc�, Grant (Ryan Vincent), Elizabeth can't help but worry that he's going to leave her. Despite adjusting to new medications, and the loving support that her partner provides, she continues to suffer from audible and visual hallucinations. Voices in her head exclaim, "He's never going to marry you." It sounds as if a train is about to roar through the apartment at any moment. And, most upsetting of all, Elizabeth keeps envisioning a man who insists that she take her own life to spare Grant from any further burdens.

A semiautobiographical portrait of Sabella's own struggles with schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety, "Elizabeth Blue" is shot straight from the heart. It tackles this sensitive, important subject matter with empathy and warmth, shedding light on issues that need to be talked about more often. As someone who also struggles with mental illness, it feels cathartic to see myself represented in a film that doesn't glorify, or demonize, what I and so many others in the world cope with on a daily basis.

That's why it stings so badly for me to write that, overall, the film doesn't quite work. It's an emotionally honest, but dramatically contrived; each scene feels based on Sabella's personal experiences that have unfortunately been translated into all-too-familiar tropes. Largely, that's due to the dialogue, which comes off more like characters reading fortune cookies than having normal conversations. Every theme of the film is blatantly spelled out through a particular exchange and is often repeated multiple times.

The supporting players are all archetypes, but Schafer is devastatingly authentic as Elizabeth. Her eyes alone speak volumes over the script, serving as windows into her bruised, wounded soul. She carries the weight of the film on her shoulders and deserves many more starring roles as a result.

It's a shame that the film doesn't feel that it can rely on the power of Schafer's performance alone, though. Instead, it's accompanied by an overbearing piano/string score and the most overused batch of songs in recent memory, including Nina Simone's "Feelin' Good" and Etta James' "At Last." It ultimately sanitizes what could have been a more raw, intimate representation of Elizabeth's point of view.

Perhaps most disappointing at all is the film's third act, in which there's a reveal that feels jarring, overly familiar and slightly cheap. "Elizabeth Blue" has the best intentions, and I hope the production has been therapeutic for Sabella, but it's just too rough around the edges, both structurally and aesthetically, to warrant a recommendation. That being said, I look forward to Sabella's next project and hope he continues to make films that raise mental health awareness.