There are a lot of artsy people out there who believe that because a movie is independent, it's automatically art and better than some drivel you'd see in a normal theater or on TV.  Seen as part of the 12th San Francisco Independent Film Festival, A+D is the epitome of rubbish filled with emotional nonsense that left me literally drinking a gallon of water so I would have an excuse to step out and use the restroom every few minutes.

     A+D is a self described "universal story of relationships", but it's not.  It's a movie about a mentally unstable woman who thinks nagging is witty and how miserable a man would become who's stupid enough not to notice the telltale warning signs that she's totally insane.  Was there romance in the story?  No, there was artsy romance which only appeals to lonely old women.  Was there conflict in the story?  Yes, a lot of it but it was all passive aggressive emotional nonsense that just makes you want to hit someone with a baseball bat.  A more accurate description of the story should be:  "An in depth look at why men don't want to talk, listen to or respect the female gender."

     Amber Sealey plays Alice, a witty artist who finds love in a passive aggressive man named Dave (Anton Saunders).  Their relationship is strange as Dave mysteriously finds Alice's complaints about his eyebrows and her statements saying his work isn't art clever and attractive instead of a huge red flag.  They spend their days making love and repeating the same words to each other as they look at their naked bodies in their flat's bathroom mirror.  It doesn't take long for Alice and Dave's blossoming relationship to sour.  She begins to ask questions that she obviously doesn't want the answers to ("Do you think about having sex with other women?") and when she gets them, she's obviously bothered and proceeds to pick at Dave's fragile ego.  Alice constantly hounds him into doing things he doesn't want to do and gets upset when he won't go along with her ideas.  Most of the problems could have been prevented if Dave had an ounce of will power and self pride, but if that was the case the movie would only be 20 minutes long.  Instead Dave spends his time getting frustrated and using his almost superhuman powers of passive aggression to deal with the situation.

     The setting of A+D is a London flat the characters share.  The flat itself is run down and has paint and plaster falling off the wall, which is an important feature for any independent love story.  The flat is too small, which gives the movie a cramped feeling and ensures that the main characters can't escape each other.  This setting stinks; can't Alice and Dave at least go out once in their relationship so the viewer isn't stuck watching them mindlessly complain in the house for most of the movie?

     Sealey and Saunders played their roles extremely well and after seeing this movie I don't think I could picture them as anything other than their characters.  They both could indeed have successful careers as actors.  The problem with being convincing was that they played characters that I didn't care about.  As I think back, I'm still at a loss to what A+D was actually about.  I'd like to say that it's a social commentary about how men and women secretly hate each other, but I know that isn't the greater meaning behind the film.  It could be about the differences between male and female communication and the way it affects relationships, but I doubt that's it either.  Maybe it's just a sadistic creation meant to cause the viewer pain.  Well whatever A+D is about, it's imperative that the viewer must enjoy being tortured by the emotional upheaval that most people wouldn't put up with in real life.