Illuminated in equal parts by neon bar signs and the stark light of the morning after, “Chestnut” builds out Annie’s world with a wonderful sense of atmosphere, leaning into its characters’ emotional flux as a means for shaping its story and visual form. The film’s camera here is fluid yet unobtrusive in its movements as it watches the intricate choreography of its character’s often unsaid emotional states play out. We are given over to the sense that we are moving alongside the characters here, quietly taking in the scene from underneath the drunken heaviness of our eyelids longing for sleep.
It’s a sexually charged love triangle that is as compelling as it is blurred in its boundaries and definitions. It’s fueled not only by late nights out but also by the refusal of emotional transparency that is so often weaponized by our more vulnerable and younger selves. Annie longs for Tyler’s affections, but they are won almost too easily, too quickly, leaving little of substance in the wake of their encounters beyond more unanswered questions. Tyler is quick to charm with her energetic personality and impulsive nature, while Danny is, at first glance, more of a grounding figure in his ability to speak of things beyond the moment. The task for Annie here is not to choose between Tyler and Danny, but rather to realize that each of them will inevitably leave her wanting more in their own ways.
Compact in its runtime, “Chestnut” offers a softly lyrical glimpse of young life on the precipice of a new and uncertain future. The narrative work undertaken here is subtle — a gesture, a glance, an exhalation of breath form the bulk of its affective materials, all of which are patterned only briefly by overdue bursts of frustration, anger, and sadness. It’s a film that — for both better and worse — has an easy familiarity to it in as much as its take on a coming-of-age tale is neither emphatically specific nor unique. It is, instead, utterly human in showcasing its internal worlds, offering an intimate meditation on the charged mundanities of young adulthood that, in the moment of experiencing them, feel anything but.