[Film Review] Brooklyn Film Festival: Old Flame (2022)

In writer and director Christopher Denham's third feature film Old Flame (2022), what initially appears to be a romantically charged meeting at a college reunion swiftly turns into an uneasy meditation on memory, truth and violence. The psychological thriller, which had its world premiere at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival in October 2022, features Rebeca Robles as Rachel and Andy Gershenzon as Calvin. Both Robles and Gershenzon are terrific in Old Flame, and it's their ability to play off one another so skillfully that gives the movie much of its tension. 

Old Flame feels very much like a theater production in all the best ways. The film is split into three separate "acts," labeled by title cards painted in an alarming combo of yellow and black, as if to give viewers a warning. Each time one of these cards appears on the screen, music explodes into the film, making the audience sit up and anticipate the next act. Additionally, Rachel makes many allusions to her collegiate theater productions, and at first, it seems as if she's being painted as a classic Quirky Brunette with Glasses character, just as Calvin initially appears to be a Good-but-Dorky Dad, who wears the ubiquitous "Midtown Uniform" and plays with his two young daughters via webcam in the beginning of the film. 

Since the movie is made up almost entirely of the interactions between Rachel and Calvin in three distinct locations, it feels like viewers are watching a piece of theater, where each act reveals a little bit more about the characters' relationship to one another. In the first act, Rachel surprises Calvin by arriving early at their college reunion in upstate New York – he's volunteering at the reunion and can't even find her on the list of registered guests. She tells him she's been living in Phoenix, which she describes as "hell on earth." 

The two often appear on opposite sides of the screen, as if they are on opposite sides of a stage; they're keeping a physical distance from one another, even as the copious (and awkwardly realistic) flirting eventually clues the audience in on the fact that they were romantically involved in college. Rachel suggests they go get a drink, telling Calvin, "Trouble is my middle name."

The second act takes place in a restaurant where the pair continues to flirt with each other – and with boundaries. Calvin is married, and Rachel is vague about her own romantic status, but that doesn't stop them from increasingly bizarre exchanges – like when Rachel asks if Calvin's wife's breasts are real, and he responds by telling her that they were expensive. Rachel really ups the ante by pulling out a dildo at the table. (And to bastardize a phrase from Anton Chekhov, if there's a dildo at the beginning of a movie…)

The sex toy isn't all that Rachel reveals during the second act. The camera tightens on both Rachel and Calvin's faces as she tells him she's just gotten out of rehab, where she learned, "You can't face yourself in the mirror till you face down your demons first." But what exactly are Rachel's demons? She's an expert at placing Calvin in perpetual uncertainty: after many of her more shocking admissions, she tells him she's a pathological liar, or she laughs and says, "I'm fucking with you." For Calvin, Rachel quickly goes from the one who got away to the one he can't get away from. 

Old Flame's third act takes place in Calvin's hotel room, where the truth about Rachel and Calvin's relationship (and breakup) is finally revealed during a tense back-and-forth between the two. Whereas the audience may have been uncertain about who the antagonist of the film was in the second act, the third act drags them into an unflinching light. There's also a post-credits scene worth sticking around for to give both the audience and the characters a sense of closure that they may have come to the reunion seeking in the first place.

While Old Flame started off appearing to be about an offbeat romance between Rachel and Calvin, the second and third acts twist the truth time and time again, until the horror of what really happened during their college days becomes clear. The movie's terrifying glimpse into the darkness of the human heart – and the mental and moral gymnastics people go through to justify their cruelest and most inhumane behavior – makes Old Flame a film that is impossible to shake off.

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