Now in its eleventh year, Columbia, Missouri’s True/False Film Festival is rapidly becoming a major stop on the North American festival circuit. Focusing on documentary films, True/False openly embraces films that play with the distinction between fiction and non-fiction. This year, one of the festival’s standouts was the premiere of

If you have watched The Wire, you know her face—angular jaw, wide-set eyes, sleek dark hair. Brandy Burre plays Theresa D’Agostino, Tommy Carcetti’s political consultant and Jimmy McNulty’s hook-up partner, in a fifteen-episode arc during seasons 3 and 4. After her stint on the show, Burre went on hiatus to raise her two young children with boyfriend Tim in the quaint town of Beacon, New York. When she decided to reenter showbiz, her friend and neighbor, documentary filmmaker Robert Greene, was on hand to capture the process. At the beginning of the 18-month-long shoot, Greene did not realize that he would document both the rebirth of Burre’s career and the end of her romantic partnership.

The film opens with a shot of Burre from behind, washing dishes. Dressed in a bright red dress and flanked on either side by pots of crimson flowers, lit by spotlights that fall off into darkness, she seems to be on a theater stage, in a kitchen meant to evoke mid-century motherhood and all its attendant strains. While holding a glass, she speaks in voiceover about being the kind of person “who breaks things.” Then the film switches into a cinema verité register with the muted colors of digital video, and it becomes clear that this stage set was Burre and Tim’s kitchen all along. Greene had cast Burre in a scene from a Sirk-ean melodrama, staged in her own home.

A documentary filmmaker explicitly interested in questions of performance (his most recent feature, Fake It So Real, focuses on independent pro wrestling), Greene uses Burre’s personal life upheaval “to get at the theatricality of performing yourself, the theatricality of everyday life and how we can make melodramas in our heads.” The majority of Actress is direct cinema-style depictions of Burre’s daily life—handing her children juiceboxes from the fridge, rolling up a porch rug in advance of an impending blizzard, driving to New York City to sing at a cabaret—and interviews in which Burre speaks directly to the camera, explaining her thought processes and emotional logic. While these scenes of humdrum life and clarifying confessionals have a potency all their own, they take on more affecting power when combined with the occasional stylized sequence, some of which blend more seamlessly with the narrative than the brilliantly-lit kitchen scene.

Specifically, a few bravura slow-motion shots, combined with haunting music, make the melodrama of Burre’s life come even more into focus. After watching a video of her daughter’s birthday party in California, celebrated while Burre stayed in New York for a singing gig, Burre weeps. In the next shot, its temporal relationship to the former uncertain, the camera follows Burre in slow motion as she checks on food she is cooking on the stove, then walks through a dark room to the foyer. Her young daughter stands on the staircase, waving a clothes hanger, which Burre takes, holding it in one hand and throwing her head back as if accepting a trophy. Harry Belafonte’s sweet, mournful version of “Waly Waly” (also known as “False Love”) plays throughout this slow-motion shot, imbuing the mother and daughter’s simple gestures with poignancy and emphasizing Burre’s emotional turmoil over the break-up of her family.

The filmmaker’s techniques serve to draw attention to the constructed nature of the film and to emphasize the internally dramatic quality of Burre’s ostensibly ordinary life. Thus, the film both expands the nature of documentary filmmaking (alongside other formally inventive and metacritical recent documentaries such as Stories We Tell and The Act of Killing), and expands the acceptable limits of life melodrama. Rather than cling to the notion that cinema verite’s objectivity is the path to truth, Greene uses a cinema verité style to both show the external reality of Burre’s daily life, and to express her personal, subjective experience of it.

In addition to directing, Greene is also an accomplished editor, having cut recent documentaries Owning the Weather and Making the Boys. While in some ways Actress resembles personal documentaries made by Miriam Weinstein, Ed Pincus, and Ross McElwee, Greene also draws on his experience editing fiction films, such as indie director Alex Ross Perry’s forthcoming Listen Up Philip. As such, it is not so odd that Greene points to inspiration in a specific genre of fiction filmmaking: the musical. Writing for Sight & Sound in January 2014, Greene explains why he rewatches Mary Poppins every time he begins editing a film. He writes, “Musicals have similar narrative/non-narrative tensions [as documentary films] and the best movies artfully exploit this to create unique viewing experiences. …The narrative arrangements are similarly broad, fluid and nontraditional and exploring the way musicals propel stories forward with set pieces, layered meanings and use of expressionistic imagery can be highly instructive.” One hopes current and future non-fiction filmmakers are listening.

Actress is an Opening Night Selection at the Wisconsin Film Festival. Director Robert Greene and star Brandy Burre will be in attendance.

A love that has caught me by surprise has had me thinking about the characteristics of television that I love. I don’t think I’m talking about either fanship or aesthetics here. I am, in my own mind at least, distinctly not a fan. I often feel like I have some sort of genetic aberration that prevents me from engaging in fanlike behavior toward television, sports teams, really anything; don’t get me wrong—I like, even love some things, but I’ve never been one to take it to the next level of fanship behaviors. I’m also aware that the television I most love is not necessarily at the top of the list I’d construct of “most excellent artistic achievement” in television. What follows is consequently decidedly not a case for what makes for the “best” television, but for the television I most want to watch.

Sometimes love surprises us; I never thought I’d love Sons of Anarchy; in fact, were I to have laid the odds, I’d have guessed there was a 1 in 10 chance I’d watch beyond the pilot. Now, I had to watch beyond the pilot because I was writing a book about masculinity in cable dramas, and this cable drama is more than a little relevant to contemporary constructions of masculinity. But I soon found Sons was the show with the shortest DVR life; as soon as it appeared, I’d devour it. I even came to know new episodes would be delivered on Tuesdays and found anticipation of a new episode seeping into my weekly routines. But why?

I love Sons because it surprises me. Indeed, I can often feel my blood pressure rising as I watch because there is no telling what can happen. Important characters die, typically without teasing or spoilers. Sons has somewhat ruined broadcast TV for me. I tried, really tried to watch The Blacklist this fall, but I struggled to really care about narrative stakes. Come now, it’s NBC, we all know there is no way the backpack full of explosives is going to go off while a child is wearing it. That could happen on Sons (though if you are reading Sutter, I’m not suggesting it should).

I also think a good bit of my love for the show comes from its intense emotional melodrama, which is set in the highly masculine space of the motorcycle club. While I find melodrama predictable and fraught with complicated gender politics when set among women, watching Jax try to negotiate the personal dynamics of the family that birthed him, the club, and the family he’s created is pure pleasure. The emotional stakes are always high and situations can be melodramatically absurd, but this show makes me feel in a way few others do. I have a running tally of television moments that have just destroyed me, they make my heart hurt when I think of them to this day: the last hours of Shane Vendrell’s life (The Shield), Opie’s death; the end of this last Sons season. I love television that makes me feel without making me feel manipulated into those feelings.

I love the way Sons leaves me pondering it after our weekly time together is over. Because anything can happen, it allows me time to play back the small moments for hints of what might be to come, which brings me to another thing I love. The show is densely plotted, but never violates its previous narrative. Admittedly, sometimes the “saves” that come near the end of each season strain credibility, but they are always plausible within the narrative universe. If there is one thing that disinvests me from a narrative fast, it is when a show contradicts its own story or the nature of the characters it has constructed; why should I pay attention to detail if the writers aren’t.

Parsing out what I love about Sons—unpredictability, intense character relations, narrative consistency—reveals characteristics of many of my favorite shows. Most other favorites succeed in the first and last characteristic (The Wire, Breaking Bad, House of Cards), but few develop characters in the way that make me—and perhaps others—feel profoundly, a fact that I suspect has prevented many television opinion leaders from considering Sons among those routinely trotted out as television’s best. But regardless of journalistic attention or Emmy adulations, Sons, as paradoxical as this seems, is my TV happy place.

As I’ve reread debates about whether and how soap opera and melodrama are inherently “feminine” forms (this writing is notably pre-Butlerian), I’ve thought of how the authors couldn’t have possibly imagined Sons of Anarchy’s (SOA) melodramatic depths that are paired with just about every imaginable signifier of patriarchal masculinity. SOA is fascinating as a story set in a male, homosocial, largely patriarchal context but which centrally relies upon drama created by family conflict and secrets.

This season, SOA has utilized most every narrative strategy that defines soap opera and at the same time turned them on their head by refusing other aspects of daytime soap related to drawing out action over long periods of time. Despite the fact that many episodes feature motorcycle chases or firearm fights that offer physical action, the aspect of the storytelling that has me on edge of my seat—yelling at television, “tell him, tell him”—is that the real action has been about the process of disseminating or withholding information—straight out of the daytime playbook. The viewers know most all the secrets (or so we think), which inflects scenes with rich nuance as we try to ascertain what characters might know or suspect, just like in daytime serials.

But at the same time, SOA has used the pacing of a weekly serial, burning through narrative at a rate similar to The OC (the last show I can think of that developed and resolved major plotlines and subplots that would span seasons in most shows in just a matter of episodes). Here we have a hybrid storytelling strategy that allows and delivers conclusions within the span of a few weeks or at least the course of a 13-week season, very much contrary to the perceived source of women’s soap enjoyment of never-ending serial complications.

Categorizing SOA is difficult. In many ways, it is a family drama. Its deepest conflicts are personal and deal with the negotiation of competing loyalties; its cumulative narrative seems to be Jax Teller’s journey of deciding what kind of man he will be and dealing with the implications of that choice on those he loves and who love him. Of course this family drama takes place in the fictional, small, rural town of Charming, California on the backs of motorcycles, amidst plotlines of illegal guns, drug trade, and porn shoots, albeit with a more complicated gender politics than non-viewers might assume. I’m pretty sure John Fiske would be at a loss in trying to apply his categorizations of “feminine” or “masculine” television, and it makes me wonder a lot the scholarship of the era and continuing assumptions of gendered spectators and genre/narrative strategies.

When The Good Wife was announced last fall my first reaction was interest, as Julianna Margulies and Christine Baranski are both awesome, but that reaction quickly turned to apprehension. Infidelity is the one topic I really avoid in entertainment if I can help it, and I had no interest in seeing this play out. However, the power of word-of-mouth swayed me when a number of my friends–friends who tend to not have much of a fannish love intersection–raved about the show. I gave it a try, and I got hooked. Watching a season in the course of just a few days is always a heady experience, and one that differs from following a series as it airs, week by week. The compressed viewing can highlight weaknesses, but it can also allow longer story lines to gain impact for the viewer, benefitting from the accelerated narration.

Yet neither the larger story lines, such as the myth-arc of corrupt politicians and unjustly imprisoned husbands, nor the smaller, episodic court case narratives were what kept me watching. Rather, I found that the depth of the characters and their interactions had me riveted and wanting to see more. Bechdel test aside, it is nice to see three main female characters interact about everything other than their relationships to or with men. It is even nicer to see these women struggle and yet remain sympathetic and strong. I’m looking at Alicia Florrick and I feel myself identifying more than I have with many other characters who more closely resemble me and my life. It is the program’s demonstrated ability to show depth without needless melodrama and stereotyped caricature that I’ve fallen in love with.

By genre classification, The Good Wife is, disputably, a procedural. And what’s more, it isn’t even innovative as such. The audience is usually presented with one case per episode, and the good side tends to win: defendants are innocent and are vindicated in the nick of time. I’m not sure we have a more precise category for such procedurals cum drama (which seem to cluster in medical and legal settings), but it is the characterization in these shows as well as those in more traditional prime time soaps that I measure Alicia’s portrayal against. I don’t identify (or even much like) most of the characters on Grey’s Anatomy or Parenthood to use two shows I still watch as examples. The drama tends to be extreme, not in the actual issues–because clearly the imprisoned husband and large political scheming are dramatic indeed–but in the responses to those issues. The appeal for me is that the show succeeds in presenting mature adults with adult capabilities beyond their profession, and yet the women are not dominated by any single issue in their lives–neither motherhood nor work nor their sexuality.

The balance of work drama and home issues presents Alicia in different roles that do not defer to one another (mother, lover, wife, professional) but rather mutually influence and affect. This feels like my life: constant negotiation, juggling of different roles and responsibilities, the small concessions and compromises that are part and parcel of most adult lives. In my favorite line of the show, former boss Stern tells Alicia “I always thought the CIA could take lessons from the suburban housewife,” calling out the similar emotional demands of Alicia’s different roles. The show doesn’t shy away from the challenges Alicia faces in negotiating her adult life; this is more than I tend to expect to see on television, where story lines often trade in emotionally false dichotomies. “Issues got more complex. And I grew up,” Alicia explains to her brother; this is the moment where I feel that I am seeing a real person on the TV screen. People may up and run to Africa and break up relationships in airports (example), but most of us go to work and pick kids up from school and have fights and make up and continue on with our lives.

In Alicia, we are presented a woman who’s recovering from an immense emotional trauma and upheaval in her life, but whose response isn’t extreme. She isn’t divorcing her cheating jail-bound husband, but she refuses his demands in a way that make it clear he’s not used to refusal. In the subtle details we see her change and grow, rather than in big melodramatic gestures, and this is why I love the show. At one point, her husband and potential lover discuss a court case while Alicia prepares coffee for everyone in the kitchen. When she moves to present some cakes along with the coffee, she suddenly throws them back in the box, clearly redefining her role. Emotions may not be writ large in this drama, but the message comes through loud and clear nevertheless: this Good Wife is not simply a suburban mom who was publicly shamed by her husband’s infidelities. She is a host of other things at the same time, as are we all. Adult issues are complex indeed!

It’s a teen show, it’s vampire-based, you might think it’s derivative Twilight crap.

But Vampire Diaries is doing something particularly skillful with a scenario that could as flat as the rest of the product that passes for programming on The CW.  And here’s why.  

1.) The Set-Up:

Vampire Diaries tells the tale of a beautiful teenage (orphan) girl who attracts the affections of two century-old vampire babe brothers. They love this girl, Elena, because — GET THIS — she is a dead ringer for the ancient vampire, Katherine, who turned them into vampires — but that they both loved!

Elena’s doppleganger, Katherine, circa Civil War

2.) It’s pure genre.

Genre television works within a (relatively) established paradigm, draping its narrative on the fact that it is pre-established as a “procedural,” “a sitcom,” etc.  Which isn’t to say that genre television is bad; but that there are expectations that show challenges or confirms to various extents.  Vampire Diaries is teen television and follows many of those codes, but it is also melodrama.

Let’s not consider melodrama a genre, but, as per Linda Williams, a “mode.”  Thus it’s a way of expressing a certain genre, and Vampires Diaries is a teen television expressed in the melodramatic mode — which means that it employs a high level of seriality coupled with intense, skyrocketing emotions.

There is a lot of mooning and looking into the distance and a complex web of exboyfriends, secret hook-ups, and frenemies.  There’s ample use of an earnest indie soundtrack, manifesting the melos that accentuates the moments when speech simply fails.

Yet the show manages to pull off this who-loves-who, who’s-a-witch and who’s-a-vampire, who-are-our-heroine’s-real-parents business with a straight face.  Therein lies the key to Vampire Diaries‘ genre success: it revels in its very genre-ness.  Vampire Diaries takes the melodrama to 11.

But it’s also not camp, which is crucial.  We like to think that teenagers only want snarky or satirical texts, but sometimes we all want emotions to be worthy and legitimated.  Which highlights another crucial function of the melodrama: it makes the world seem, even for one moment, morally legible.  In the end, our vampire hero loves and cherishes our human heroine, and all is right with the world.

3.) Intertextuality.

Vampire Diaries is the child of no less a teen auteur than Kevin Williamson (Dawson’s Creek). Even as the text oscillates between flashbacks of the antebellum South and an absurdly quaint contemporary Carolinian town, it also manages to acknowledge and play upon its antecedents.

In one of my favorite moments of this show, the “bad” vampire brother leafs through Twilight, exclaiming “What is up with this Bella girl? Edward is so whipped!”  What’s more, the good and bad brothers are clear ‘descendants’ of Buffy’s Angel and Spike, and the text regularly highlights its knowledge of the vampire genre, explicitly manifesting and debunking aspects of vampire lore.  Vampire Diaries is earnest and straight-faced, but it’s also smart, like that cute nerd in high school.

4.) Innovation.

As a pre-sold, Alloy Entertainment Product, it could rest on the laurels, riding the cultural wave of Twilight and True Blood.

But Vampire Diaries regularly employs intricate flashbacks to another century.  Costumes!  Teen vampires meets narrative complexity! It’s also crafted a heroine who is no Bella — she’s smart, has her own volition, and speaks her mind.  She has sexual desire, and isn’t meant to be some cipher for the return to the cult of true womanhood, as is made so disturbingly transparent in Twilight. The show refuses to be abstinence porn (Twilight) or soft-core erotica (True Blood).  There’s a coven of vampires locked in a vault beneath a seemingly peaceful Southern hamlet.  Can you get more obviously, beautifully allegoric?

I realize I may have made the show sound like a blood and thunder soap opera  — The Perils of Pauline meets My So-Called Life.  Good.  That’s exactly what I was hoping for.  Both of those ‘programs’ demonstrate, in very different ways, the pinnacle of melodramatic plotting.  And Vampires Diaries deserves its place amongst them – not to mention your viewership.  So why aren’t you watching?