Road To The Well

Road To The Well is a comedy about two men driving around with a dead sex worker in the back of their car. If that sounds like the sort of thing you'd enjoy, it will probably disappoint you. If it sounds like the sort of thing that would make you uncomfortable, you may find it both satisfying and amusing.

Frank (Laurence Fuller) is one of life's fall guys. He's kicked around at work even before his girlfriend tarts cheating on him with his boss. The boss then gives him an assignment that will send him away for six months, but he has a little time to spare before it starts. Unsure what to, he calls his old friend Jack (Micah Parker), a drifter who seems to be much happier with his life, and right from the get go things start looking up, as he meets a beautiful woman (Rosalie McIntire) in a bar. Bt when he comes round after being beaten unconscious in a motel room and finds the woman lying dead beside him, things start looking very bad indeed.

The rest of the film tells the meandering tale of his and Jack's exploits as they travel north, Jack having decided that if they dump the body far away then Frank will be safe from any murder investigation. He's immediately confident that Frank didn't actually do the deed, and says casually that he shouldn't worry about the woman too much because she's only a hooker. The readiness with which the befuddled Frank accepts this is telling. This is a film about men in which female characters only appear intermittently, but without paying attention to who they are - as more than mere cyphers - one cannot hope to untangle the increasingly complicated plot.

One of the most notable things about this film is its score. It's only the second full length work by Conor Jones but the episodic nature of the story suits his eclectic style. Though some may find it intrusive, it adds a lot to the character of the film and is a nice change from the plinky piano scores commonly found in indie films today; it fills in for the weight of emotion behind Fuller's carefully muted performance.

Treading a fine line between farce and analytical drama, director Jon Cvack steers the film past many potential pitfalls, producing something that, whilst not always successful, is certainly distinctive. The comedy is pitch black in places and the thriller elements become stronger as the story develops, but it's at its most interesting as a character study about a man who thinks he's just like everyone else, the scary thing being that he might be right.