Groove! : comedy/drama. Starring Lola Glaudini, Hamish Linklater, Denny Kirkwood, MacKenzie Firgens, Rachel True and Vince Riverside. Cinematography by Matthew Irving. Produced by Danielle Renfrew and Greg Harrison. Edited, written and directed by Greg Harrison.

First a caveat: what I know about raves and rave culture could be scratched out on a tab of LSD. I've had my fun in life, but heavy-duty drug taking, be-ins, teach-ins, love-ins, out-ins and in-ins have all escaped me. Just the thought of taking Ecstasy makes my kidneys shrivel up like old peas.

But having said that, I came away with a fair degree of admiration for Groove a new feature film about the rave subculture that follows on the heels of the documentary Better Living Through Circuitry. Bay Area filmmaker Greg Harrison’s directorial debut is an excellently made if dramatically undernourished look at that underground world here in San Francisco, the City that was likely the spawning point of the scene, like it has been for quite a few others.

Groove opens like a Tarantino movie: under the flashing digitized credits three young men and a woman, break into an abandoned SOMA warehouse and take over the joint for a night of a DIY illegal rave. Though derivative, it’s a superbly shot and edited sequence: flashy, kinetic, rhythmically underscored with driving drum n’ bass as we watch these kids create a separate strange world that stands against the smothering Straights hovering outside.  

The film promises much stylistically and technically, but when it’s time to deliver dramatically, things go soft. Most of the incidents revolve around David (Hamish Linklater) a frustrated twenty-something writer who’s dragged against his will to this party by brother Colin (Denny Kirkwood) who thinks it a perfect setup to slip the ring on the finger of girlfriend Harmony (Mackenzie Firgens). At the height of the party, zooming along on Ecstasy, David meets and falls for Leyla (Lola Glaudini) a young woman newly arrived from New York whose ennui and confusion mirror David’s. “I’d like to be able to commit myself to something without fear,” she says with a nice touch of vulnerability and bitterness.

Like American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused and many other coming-of-age films, Harrison has woven in several other storylines: a gay couple celebrating their first anniversary together get lost on the way to the party and fall to bickering. A wanna-be DJ tries to work up the courage to take to the turntables. Two of the rave’s ringleaders struggle to keep a handle on things inside, while the Law (in the person of Nick Offerman from Treasure Island) lurks around outside.

One partygoer walks out, another ODs and by night’s end everyone has changed in ways big and small. The drug’s effect breaks down boundaries among some and strengthens them among others.  Almost everyone is swept up in the swelling tide of feelings unleashed by a bit of artificial chemistry. Their loyalty to their small, peripatetic community is so strong, that even when the cops break up the party, they sneak back into the warehouse and keep on going.

If only that part of it was as interesting as it sounds.  Harrison’s script is pretty thin stuff overall, giving his competent hard working cast not too much to work with. While a few interesting developments happen along the way (especially to David’s brother Colin), the film feels under written.   This is a film about people who yearning to get lost in the present, whether trying to break free of their pasts or the dreariness of the dreary everyday. They succeed, on their terms at least, simply by their own bubble of reality. Perhaps, because of that, Groove lacks a strong a sense of conflict and drama. The film doesn’t reach a climax so much as winds down with its participants, like a raver at dawn.  Perhaps it identifies too closely with the scene. Sometimes it feels like watching a bunch of nice and mildly interesting people party too much.

On the other the very hyper-kinetic style of the film may also keep it from reaching deeper. It so much wants to put us in the groove, it can’t slow down, stand back and observe, but instead overwhelms its material.

As an exercise in style and technique, though, Groove comes up a winner.  Harrison, who also edited the film, shows a sure eye with direction, composition and editing. As pure moviemaking, it’s often fun to watch. Especially pleasing is how cinematographer Matthew Irving recreates the bleached out images of 1970s movies that contribute to the sense of hallucinogenic disorientation.  The movie wants to convey the pure experience of raves and in that almost succeeds. Too bad there isn’t a stronger script to make us ecstatic, too.