In meta-experiments that blur the good old lines between fiction and the real life stories of the filmmakers, the resulting film risks being borderline inaccessible unless the audience is provided with a lot of explanation up front. This is far less of a problem with classically told stories of mega-famous artists delving into (semi-)autobiography (like Steven Spielberg with The Fablemans), but definitely with smaller projects by independent filmmakers whose production is more idiosyncratic. What may be a compelling behind-the-scenes story as described in a press kit may not necessarily be something exciting or even coherent in the finished film for someone watching the work without the luxury of reading production notes before the screening.
Fortunately, that’s not the case with “Invention,” a compact, gripping and warm-hearted hybrid of feature film and documentary that’s billed as “A film by Callie Hernandez and Courtney Stephens”: Both women co-wrote the screenplay, Callie Hernandez also stars, and Courtney directs.
Hernandez made her film debut as “Space Babe” in “Machete Kills,” though her first role was an ultimately uncredited appearance in Terrence Malick’s long-delayed “Song to Song.” Since then, she’s undeniably been noticed more as an ensemble highlight in studio films and quirkier independent productions from exciting auteurs. Alongside fellow eventual breakout stars Jessica Rothe and Sonoya Mizuno, she’s one of Emma Stone’s singing buddies in an early number in Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land.” She almost makes it to the end alive in Ridley Scott’s “Alien: Covenant” and Adam Wingard’s “Blair Witch.” And she’s charmed both Andrew Garfield in David Robert Mitchell’s “Under the Silver Lake” and actors-directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead in “The Endless.”
Director Courtney Stephens has now amassed an impressive body of experimental and non-fiction work, including the 2021 feature Terra Femme, an anthology of independent women’s travelogues from the 1920s to the 1950s that the filmmaker pieced together to explore, among other things, the role of documentation in our lives. Stephens’ work is rooted in the vast possibilities of archival footage, making her the perfect collaborator for this project, which was reportedly conceived by Hernandez.
“Invention” fictionalizes the immediate aftermath of the death of Hernandez’s own father, which occurred in the fall of 2021 — a line alluding to Covid skepticism suggests a similar date for the film’s action. Hernandez’s father, an alternative health practitioner, made several television appearances from the ’90s through 2020, with VHS recordings of those shows finding their way into “Invention” from the beginning. Hernandez plays a woman — amusingly named Carrie Fernandez — who must cope with the death of her estranged father, an inventor, seen only through the aforementioned archival footage.
Meeting with an executor (James N. Kienitz Wilkins), Carrie learns that several investment deals gone wrong mean that various parties may be able to make a valid claim on her father’s estate. However, the old man had set up a separate trust fund to ensure that Carrie would be left something behind: a patent for an experimental healing device. The invention has been recalled by the FDA and is in legal limbo. This is said to be Carrie’s only inheritance, aside from the key to a room in her father’s house that contains a model of the device.
Carrie visits the town where he lived (in part to sell his house) and meets locals there who had business dealings with her father. Many of these mildly comic encounters involve Carrie showing up at people’s shops or homes, introducing herself as the doctor’s daughter, usually hearing a description of her father as an embarrassingly eccentric person, and then bluntly breaking the news that he has died.
One of those involved, Babby (Lucy Kaminsky), shows up at the deceased’s home seeking advice and is devastated by Carrie’s news. A firm believer in Carrie’s father’s attempts to harness the healing power of energetic frequencies, this visitor thinks the father may have been killed because of the world-changing potential of his findings and creations. Hernandez’s real father was apparently conspiracy-theorist-inclined, and from this early conversation scene on, the lo-fi dramedy deftly explores the idea of grief as a catalyst and vessel for conspiratorial thinking; the way in which fantastical constructions are the easiest, or sometimes only, way we can process loss.
Carrie is portrayed as a woman with no faith in fringe or mainstream belief systems, which is particularly emphasized in one of the film’s funniest and most awkward scenes: when the Christian boss (Joe Swanberg) of a production shop convinces Carrie to kneel with him on the floor of his office and say a long prayer for her continued well-being after making it clear that she is not married and therefore has no one to pray for her. Hernandez’s poker face toward her on-screen surrogate does wonders for the film’s dry comedy, making it all the sweeter when Carrie grits her teeth at bad jokes during a post-sex scene with an employee of a local antique store (Sahm McGlynn) with whom she forms a bond and becomes involved. And all the more poignant when she eventually tears up.
While Invention has the narrative tropes of many grief dramas we’ve seen before, the experience is altogether more unique thanks to Stephens’ ever-shifting, increasingly abstract approach. Aside from the archival footage scattered throughout, Invention was shot on Super 16mm, with Stephens inserting arresting, effects-based sequences between conversations, with images that could be dreams or the product of Carrie’s father’s medical invention, if it really works.
Elsewhere, the image of a burning red candle occasionally precedes or ends scenes, with the accompanying audio hinting at the structure of the film itself. Before we first see the Executioner, for example, we hear Kienitz Wilkins mistakenly calling Carrie “Miss Hernandez” before correcting her and saying “Fernandez.” Elsewhere in these interludes, we hear actors commenting on the material, with Hernandez, prompted by her scene partners, elaborating on genuine autobiographical details.
Clocking in at just 72 minutes, Invention’s closing sequences may not be the most satisfying ending, favoring transcendence through escalating atmospheric tricks over Carrie’s search for a definitive way forward. But how often does the grieving process really yield clear-cut answers? During one of these fourth-wall-breaking interludes, Joe Swanberg is heard saying, “We’re making an improvised movie, we have to let the magic happen.” He’s responding to Hernandez, who jokes around between takes and makes music for herself, but it’s an apt comment on the success of the entire project. This is a candid, playful, and insightful film that achieves its own kind of magic by showing how far you can push the boundaries between metafiction and explicit documentary.
