SXSW Review: Girl Walk // All Day
Look, I'm in my early forties. I listen to out of date, untrendy music. I had no idea who or what Girl Talk was, much less what it had to do with the movie Girl Walk // All Day. What I knew was that a lot of my SXSW filmgoing friends were raving about this dance-a-rific musical film, everyone was talking about getting out of their theater seats and dancing around, and the movie was playing at Alamo Drafthouse Village on a night when I didn't want to go downtown. From such unlikely beginnings are great SXSW moviegoing experiences made.
At its essence, Girl Walk // All Day is a feature-length music video/dance performance, but that's terribly reductive and misleading. The movie is set to the music of Girl Talk's 2010 album All Day -- if you haven't heard it, it consists of 372 samples of existing songs by other artists, which Girl Talk artfully and lyrically arranged into an amazing wall of music. (You can tell I will be downloading the album myself soon ... FYI, it's free.) Director Jacob Krupnick has artfully and lyrically arranged a film set to this music that involves continual dancing, primarily from three characters: The Girl (Anne Marsen), The Gentleman (Dai Omiya) and The Creep (John Doyle).
After five minutes, I wondered if I would be able to last through more than an hour or so of this movie, which has the thinnest of plots. After 15 minutes, I was completely hooked. Girl Walk // All Day is contagiously kinetic, a lively dance romp through New York City led by the energetic and delightful Marsen. How can you resist following her? (Also, part of the movie is set on The High Line, a part of NYC I absolutely fell in love with in December.) The characters dance through parks, department stores, Grand Central Station and a lot of other fascinating places.
While no one at my screening actually got up and started dancing (Alamo Village is a little suburban for that kind of thing), I could see many other audience members swaying and essaying tiny dance moves in their seats. I may or may not have hummed along very quietly to some of the more familiar song samples, but the music was loud enough that I'm sure no one noticed or cared. I suspect that the standing-up-dancing at other screenings was led by the filmmakers, but they were not around after the film because this screening was at the same time as an actual Girl Talk concert at SXSW, which they really wanted to attend. If we'd been downtown for the movie we probably all would have followed suit.
Girl Walk // All Day is great fun, an unexpected burst of sunshine and sparkle at SXSW. The movie will never see formal theatrical distribution because of the music's copyright situation, but you can actually watch it online. I've embedded the trailer below. I suggest throwing a party and screening the film on your biggest TV with your best sound system. Don't worry about seats.