听 According to Marc Forster, this was the movie that made his career, paving the way for the Swiss-born filmmaker to direct "Monster's Ball".
Shot on digital video in a couple of weeks for less than $10,000, "Everything Put Together" is an intense, unsettling work, which like "The Son's Room" and "In the Bedroom", depicts how hopelessly unprepared we are to cope with sudden bereavement.
Here the protagonist is the affluent Angie (Mitchell), a suburban Californian mother who loses her one-day-old baby Gabriel to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).
Her caring husband, Russ (Louis), attempts to be supportive of her grief, yet she's unable to tell her mother of her loss, and听she's treated as an outcast by friends like Judith (Burns) and Barbie (Mullally).
Earlier, they had helped Angie decorate and furnish her nursery - now they keep a wary distance, as though听her听misfortune could contaminate their comfortable lives...
Angie's increasingly tragic isolation has听echoes of Roman Polanski's "Repulsion"听and "Rosemary's Baby", and certainly Forster garnishes his material with horror movie flourishes, notably in a nightmarish trip to a storage facility to view Gabriel's belongings.
From the outset, the soundtrack, with its ominous heart beats and muted cries, creates听a mood of apprehension, which is听heightened by Roberto Schaefer's edgy,听handheld camerawork. In this context, shots of coffee being听poured down a kitchen sink, or carrots being fed into a blender, have a unexpected menace.
As a satire on suburban conformity, "Everything Put Together" would have gained greater power if the supporting characters, particularly Angie's friends,听had been drawn with more ambiguity.
Mitchell, however, produces a commanding central performance, convincingly听conveying Angie's psychological turmoil, and while the film may not be as polished as "Monster's Ball", Forster's directorial talent is clearly visible.
