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Currently Playing: STORAGE FEES | Omeleto

A man lives in a storage space. A young man drives to a storage facility late at night. He's not organizing or sorting through his things -- he's going home. He lives in the storage space, trying hard not to be discovered. Being unhoused in a tense, perilous existence. Not just because he fears being discovered, but because his lonely life leaves him a lot of time to think over his memories of his deceased mother, his fractured family, and the difficult choices he's made deep in his grief. Directed and written by Nicholas Michael Buck, this layered, poetic yet gritty drama captures the tenuous existence of a man who lives in a storage space. While it gives voice to the discomfort and isolation of homelessness, it's not interested in being straightforward, documentary-like social realism. Instead, it conveys an emotional and psychological character portrait of a young man frozen and alone in grief, facing the trauma and pain of his past while managing the alienation and anxiety of his present circumstances. The storytelling is adapted from a poem written by the writer-director, and the film keeps the poetic tenor of its source material, guided by an evocative voiceover, undergirded by a lyrical, melancholic piano score and weaving images in an elliptical, almost impressionistic way. Through its mosaic of images, incidents, events and thoughts, it covers the young man's home life, childhood and relationships with his family, giving us a loose perspective of how he came to his present situation, as well as how lonely his life is. That life, unhoused and unsupported, is conveyed with powerful, specific details of homelessness, living in a storage facility and trying not to get caught. The glare of the fluorescent light, the cramped interior of the space, showers at a 24-hour gym -- they all add up to a profound discomfort and shame, having to hide the secret of their living status. We get shards of his family dynamics -- living with a sister and brother-in-law who resent his presence, a sick mother -- as well as the man's refusal of certain moral choices. Together, these condemn him to such a provisional existence. Though we hear his voiceover, actor Parker Wierling has very little dialogue in the film, but he conveys the toll that his lingering grief, transient life and societal marginality have on a human. That profound isolation and untetheredness is what lingers after watching STORAGE FEES and is perhaps its deepest emotional resonance. The film's written and visual poetry have an unsettling weightlessness, and sometimes we get the feeling that the main character could simply dissolve away, unnoticed by the world and unaccounted for. The young man's tragedy is not just one of circumstance, but also of disconnection and invisibility. His life and fate aren't so far removed from most people: just a few more steps towards indifference, marginalization and disconnection, and we could find ourselves in the same space, trying to improvise a home with what resources we have, in a world where it takes increasingly more resources to feel safe in the world. STORAGE FEES. Courtesy of Norman Buckley at https://instagram.com/storagefeesfilm.