BRETT HALEY, “THE NEW YEAR”

By Brandon Harris

A young woman works at the shoe counter at a Pensacola, Florida bowling alley. Having abandoned the ambitions of her youth, she takes care of her ailing father, who painfully struggles with cancer. With the return of a rival from high school into her long standing social circle, the stillness that has taken over her existence breaks, leaving her to consider the possibility of a new direction, one which seems tantalizingly close and yet ever illusive. This is subject matter than may be right within American Independent Cinema’s wheelhouse, but in thoughtful hands, even the most seemingly pedestrian yarns can contain multitudes. A mid season candidate for low budget wonderkind of the year, Brett Haley’s The New Year is a quietly riveting, old fashioned AmerIndie, a character driven slice of  Florida panhandle life made for four figures that marks the coming out party for Triste Kelly Dunn, who turns in a performance that harkens back to past breakthroughs by girl next door types mired with dead end circumstances amidst sunny, coastal locales: think Ashley Judd in Ruby in Paradise or Lauren Ambrose in Swimming.

Skipped over by Sundance and SXSW only to surface at respected regional fests such as Sarasota and Nashville, the film is a feature directorial debut for Haley, a Pensacola, FL native who financed, produced, directed, co-wrote and co-photographed. He even downloaded the P2 cards. Between takes no less. Despite cutting his teeth as an Assistant to the Director on studio subsidized, highly formal Indiewood projects like The Road and Reservation Road, Haley counts John Cassavetes as his primary aesthetic influence, which goes a long way toward explaining the low-fi immediacy of his film. The New Year opens at the brand new reRun Gastropub Theater in Dumbo, Brooklyn this coming Friday.

Filmmaker: What provided the initial concept and inspiration for the project? Did you always conceive of this film at such a low budget?

Haley: The inspiration came totally out of left field and yet somewhat naturally. I’ve told this story a few times, but its just what happened. I was on a Amtrak train … Read the rest