Alex Sarrigeorgiou in In Transit
Lucy (Alex Sarrigeorgiou) is in a rut, but she’s happy there, or at least she thinks she is. She still lives in the small rural Maine town that she grew up in, she has a loving, low-drama relationship with her long-term boyfriend Tom (François Arnaud, The Borgias), and a job working at the same bar that her father worked at until his death. The inertia in her life is so strong that you suspect she might do the same (an object at rest stays at rest and all that)—until, that is, she is acted upon by two outside forces. The first: the owner of the bar is looking to sell it to out-of-town investors, leaving Lucy and Tom scrambling to raise enough funds to maybe buy the bar themselves. The second: the arrival of Ilse (Jennifer Ehle), a world-renowned fine art painter currently stuck in her own rut, who has left her husband and son in London to retreat to Maine in the hopes of finding her muse. She finds it in Lucy, sketching her face one night at the bar. She invites to pay Lucy to pose for her, and finds inspiration in her lithe, ballerina-like form. And Lucy too gets shaken out of her complacency and begins to see a world outside of the routine she’s grown accustomed to.
In Transit has a bit more plot than that, but the plot isn’t really the point: this is a movie that happens in the conversations, even when the conversations are banal on the surface. Much praise to Sarrigeorgiou, who penned the excellent screenplay that lets the characters’ personalities and yearnings unfold in what they choose to say about their lives and desires and in what they hold back, and who captures Lucy’s journey with impressive subtlety and nuance. Ehle (perhaps best known as Elizabeth Bennet in the classic 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice) also impresses as Ilse, in the way she conveys Ilse slowly regaining her mojo and in the way she communicates her character’s love for art in a way that reveals the film’s central themes without beating you over the head with them.
Despite the film’s tight 82-minute runtime, director Jaclyn Bethany keeps things feeling realistic and lived-in; there are no cases where the story feels rushed or the character development feels unearned. The only slightly false notes in the film come from Juampa’s score; while it’s ringing piano notes can feel evocative at times, they’re more often jarring, and feel like they came from a more depressing movie rather than this hopeful, bittersweet story of two people finding in each other a way to shake themselves back to life. | Jason Green
In Transit will screen at the B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive (12657 Olive Blvd.) on Saturday, November 8 at 4:00 pm as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival 2025. The film is paired with the short film The Genie and will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers. Single film tickets are $15 for general admission, $12 for Cinema St. Louis members and students with valid current photo IDs. Multi-film and all-access passes are also available. Further information is available here.
