Nobody Needs to Know

Firsttime feature film maker Azazel Jacobs skillfully interweaves four strands of New York life. The city itself is a central character, portrayed in delicate black and white imagery. A young black man who observes and acts as our eyes through his voiceover represents another. The third, forming the central story, involves a young actress, disenchanted by an audition, now struggling to find another way to be herself, in contrast to her flat mate still dreaming of being a star. And fourth are the auditions of a pretentious young director, actually completely unclear about what he seeks, who takes his actresses through the ordeal of convincingly playing their death.While he works with some dangerously familiar motifs of the American indie cinema (agonising young actresses, the making of films about the making of movies), Jacobs gives fresh depth to this territory, always offering a completely convincing and sympathetic portrait of his young New Yorkers and their scene, always keeping us involved. He gets the best out of his actors, the auditions in particular make fascinating performance pieces within the film itself. A film with brains.