Ray Pride

"Design," which debuted at Sundance 2002 amid tepid performance vehicles and movies that take low budgets as an excuse for an anemic visual style, was a sometimes baffling yet bold and audacious first feature, a rare attempt to craft an American meditation on chance and fate. Starring, written and directed by Chicagoan Davidson Cole, it's a film weighted with the powerful influence of Kieslowski, but a Kieslowski without a whisper of God's grace. Yet in etching a universe that does not forgive, Cole did not forget that digressions and strange events are often more compelling than simple plot and technical timidity. The film's extravagant gloom and daringly dismal bruised-night palette, coupled with a Nic Cage-style unhinged performance by Cole, might mark "Design" as an extravagant self-indulgence, like "Magnolia," a film which shares a love of multi-character sprawl, but it's darker and more squirrelly than that.

"Design" opens Friday at the Siskel Film Center.

(2004-02-11)

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