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HER COMPOSITION: A Sensual Journey Of Sound

HER COMPOSITION: A Sensual Journey Of Sound

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With all of the inundation of CGI filled mega messes in mainstream film, it’s nice to get back to the basics of artistry. Her Composition follows Master’s student Malorie Gilman (Joslyn Jensen) through her sonorous journey to find inspiration and create her musical thesis. Colored with sounds and textures, it’s a journey through the mind of an artist.

A Desperate Plan

Malorie is a Ph.D. candidate in a prestigious NYC School of Music. Though she is up for a scholarship, she is disillusioned with her life and uninspired to write her Master’s thesis; an original musical composition to be played upon her graduation. Her professors have assured her a scholarship if she is able to finish her piece, but later, she finds out that she has lost that. This composition then becomes something her graduation hinges upon. If she doesn’t finish it, she doesn’t pass.

Her Composition: A Sensual Journey of Sound
source: Indie Rights

Seeking comfort in her loss, she calls her live-in boyfriend, Arthur (Ryan Metcalf), only to find out that he is breaking up with her. Coupled with a letter for rising rent; an unknown inability to call her parents for help nor desire to live back home with them, she is faced with having to pay tuition and the entirety of rent by herself.

Malorie’s best friend, Gila (Margot Bingham), who works for a woman’s rights organization, gets contacted by “Kim” (Okwui Okpokwasili), a high-end escort, who’s interested in being an informant for the FBI in their ongoing sting of an illegal sex ring. Gila tells Malorie about the story with the intention of creating a point of interest in her life. Malorie requests to go and meet “Kim” as if she works for the organization herself.

When Malorie meets “Kim”, she shares with Malorie a list of her favorite clients and everything each one likes. Though Malorie is supposed to give this information back to the women’s group to turn in, she keeps it herself, concocting a crazy plan to make money fast.

A Presumptuous Awakening

Malorie then takes it upon herself to continue where “Kim” left off with her clients. Her adventure as an escort isn’t just for money though; she ends up using each different client, to create each individual musical movement for her thesis composition. Incorporating all of the sounds she hears from the street (drummers in the park cars honking and random people’s conversations), she invents an elaborate “map” of the city on her apartment wall, connecting the locations of the men she services, into musical sections of the opus. The film itself is set up in “movements”; each titled something different for the “progression” of Malorie in the story.

Her Composition: A Sensual Journey of Sound
source: Indie Rights

The film is presented with abundant artistry through action, dance sequences, musical sequences and copious amounts of sound which could also work as a theatrical piece. As an artistic person myself, it was quite profound to watch the way I see and hear things, textures, sounds and patterns laid out before me. I could intimately relate to and appreciate the intricacies designed by writer/director Stephan Littger. He brilliantly added layer upon layer of different sensory experiences throughout.

I found myself less than enamored with Malorie as a character though. She came off, the entirety of the film, as spoiled and quite arrogant. When she first meets “Kim”, she presumed she’d be meeting a man, when it turns out to be a black woman. Then she goes right ahead and contacts “Kim”‘s clients, presuming that the clients will automatically like her. Why would a group of people once interested in a black woman be interested in a skinny, white girl? Luckily for her, that conveniently works out. Also, there are many overlooked implications in a story about a privileged white woman choosing to become an escort, versus the many women of color, cis or not, who end up escorting out of necessity. Where Malorie can make the money she needs escorting and quit, the reality is that many others cannot.

Without knowing if Jensen was intended to play Malorie callously and unfeeling, I can only say that doing so made me like the character even less. She walks around in a bit of an emotionless whirlwind, leaving human beings in her wake. We don’t have enough knowledge of her history; why she supposedly can’t go home or ask her parents for help; nor why she believes this particular situation is so dire that it necessitates prostitution. Because of this, I found it very difficult to sympathize with her.

Taking Responsibility

In a day and age of social unrest and change all over the world, I feel it’s crucial for artists to take great care and responsibility with their work. There are so many marginalized groups struggling for equality, a voice, representation, and even their very lives. With so much at stake, when filmmakers choose to take on a sensitive group’s plight, it MUST be thoroughly researched, inclusive and labored over exhaustively.

Her Composition: A Sensual Journey of Sound
source: Indie Rights

We must not let privilege of any kind get the better of us. The person in front of and behind the camera lens counts.

Women of color all over the world face a plight that many cannot comprehend. Violence against women of color in America, is disproportionately higher compared with their white counterparts. White women report offenses more often, but African American women were more likely to experience rape and intimate partner violence, overall. They are more likely to be criminalized, viewed promiscuously, and imprisoned. In 2009 a study of hate crimes committed against the LGBT community, 79% were people of color. Though there is a scene of violence against Malorie by one of the clients, she gets out of the situation relatively easily. Many sex workers don’t make it out of these kinds of situations at all.

By the end, Malorie seems unscathed and unchanged by her experiences. Even though the circumstances are supposedly desperate enough for her to take on such a controversial living, there is no humility or respect for the profession itself, the people involved or the inherent moral conflict involved in such circumstances. It looks easy for Malorie. She seems to even enjoy certain men as if she were just dating them. Everyone pays her willingly, rarely objectifies her, generally treats her with respect and instantly accepts her as their substitute. I can’t imagine that clients who spend this much money per encounter accept just anyone, even with a good reference from their usual escort.

Also, though the medical implications of risky sex are touched upon, Malorie avoids any of these consequences as well. She comes out of this experience feeling, seemingly, ok. This can’t be the reality of being an escort.

Conclusion: Her Composition

Even though there are distinctive character/story problems, there is a lot of beauty and creativity in this film. The visuals created by cinematographer Andres Karu, coupled with a highly skilled sound crew, create a symphonic world of imagery laced with sensory texture in the vein of Master filmmaker, Adrian Lyne.

Littger is a highly skilled artistic and visual storyteller. Most of the film was shown and not spoken, the way film is supposed to be. There is nothing extraneous in what is spoken. In fact, we could’ve used a bit more of Malorie’s story in order to give us a greater sense of who she is and where she is coming from. What would cause her to believe that escorting was her only alternative to get out of this situation? If her relationship is so bad with her parents that she’d resort to escorting rather than go back home, why do they show up at her graduation looking all happy and proud of her? We also could have used a few more overt clues throughout the general storyline. Much of it is left open to interpretation that could easily mislead or be misconstrued by the audience.

And what did she learn in the end? We never see her character grow, only get what she wants and that simply does not work for me. There’s nothing alluring or interesting about Malorie. She can’t possibly be just a “girl next door”, because escorting is not what an everyday person does in a crisis. There is clearly more darkness lurking in the back of her mind that needs exposure and fleshing out.

As a first-time feature for writer/director Littger though, Her Composition is ambitious and full of earnest affectivity. The idea of someone using their desperation and sexual exploits to create a one of a kind musical composition is truly compelling and innovative. Littger is definitely “one to watch”. I hope he clings to his artistry as he rises but dares to go much further exploring and exposing his characters in future works. If an audience can’t connect with the characters, much will be lost in the rest of the film.

Her Composition is available to stream on Amazon’s Prime Video.

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