Silver Tongues is (roughly) a film about a couple who travel from town to town pretending to be a variety of different people with different personas. It's a strange one this - great performances, fantastically shot, good script - but just the whole feel of it was unnervingly unsettling.
I spent the first 40 minutes not saying a word - just staring intently at the screen, unsure of what I was seeing and equally undecided if I was enjoying it or not. The last film to leave me feeling remotely like that was Ivans XTC and that was years ago. Silver Tongues confuses you and entices you in equal amounts. There is no explanatory narrative nor does it hold your hand the whole way throughout, it is left to you (on certain occasions) to take what you want from it and try and decipher the motivation of the protagonists in certain scenes. I like films like this, where everything is not always answered instantly and even sometimes not at all - the murky air of mystery is much better than a disappointing revelation of uselessness in my eyes.
Anyways, back to the film - it's hard to like the main protagonists all the time but the writers do a really excellent job of making them somewhat sympathetic - you don't necessarily root for them but because you never know what they are at in a number of different situations - but it's somewhat hard to really root against them, no matter what they are getting up to in any of the numerous situations. Your curiosity takes over and replaces the disgust you may occasionally feel towards them.
Lee Tergesen is excellent as always - but if you've seen the man as Beecher in Oz or as Chet in the Weird Science Tv show (Vanessa Angel) then you'll already know the boy has got serious acting chops. Ignore the Weird Science part there - I just wanted to mention Vanessa Angel! Enid Graham - or Rose Van Alden from Boardwalk Empire- is brilliant too as his partner in this adventure. She really manages to hold the film together all on her own, whatever "role" she may be playing at the time. The two of them together work fantastically well and as a result you can begin to understand the actions of their characters a bit better, well, much more than if two lesser actors inhabited the roles.
It's hard to be overly critical of Silver Tongues as they've done everything right in relation to how to make a film, but there's something lacking to push it over the edge and make it one of those indie films that takes the world by storm. It's hard to put my finger on what exactly that is but the fact the characters, their actions and motives are unscrupulous and unpleasant to say the least probably has a good bit to deal with it.
Silver Tongues is a film for people who enjoy being slightly unsettled, now while this wouldn't exactly be my favourite type of film genre to watch it is good to mix it up a little every so often - and you could do a hell of a lot worse than Silver Tongues. Befuddlingly enjoyable 3 / 5
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