“Pumpkin,” from first-time directors Anthony Abrams and Adam Larson Broder, is a really strange film. Really, really strange.
But it works in such a way that ends up drawing the viewer into the story, themes and characters, without telling them what to think. And it has absolutely nothing to do with Halloween.
The film played at Bijou Art Cinemas earlier this month, and will come to DVD and VHS on Nov. 5. It opens with Carolyn McDuffy (Christina Ricci), a USC student and member of the Alpha Omega Phi sorority on campus, scheming with her Greek sisters to win “sorority of the year” by assisting disabled athletes. This scene has a serene, bright aesthetic which alternately sets and offsets the tone of the film throughout its 113 minute run-time.
At first, Carolyn is surrounded by a world of forced cheerfulness, both on her own accord and by her sorority environment. Perfection and imperfection, normalcy and weirdness saunter around her head as she works with her assigned athlete, Pumpkin Romanoff (Hank Harris). She has an immediate repulsion to him, which turns to a kind of simultaneous affection and attraction.
In one of the funnier moments of the film, her poetry teacher rips apart her “Ode to Pasadena,” challenging her to read the poem. She tears it up and throws it in the garbage can halfway through the film, as sort of a breaking point for her character. It’s a short scene, but it packs a punch.
And here is precisely where the strength of “Pumpkin” lies — in its subtlety. Take Pumpkin’s watercolors, or Carolyn’s boyfriend, the cookie-cutter tennis star, Kent (Sam Ball). Or the seamless blending of satire, comedy, drama and edgy subject matter without having to fall into any one of them. The film confronts the racy — both literal and metaphorical — topics under the guise of happy, purposeful cheerfulness without being preachy. To give away more scenes of this balancing act would be spoiling the fun.