'The Year Between' Review: Alex Heller Dedicates Gap Year to Bipolar Disorder in Well-Rounded Indie Music

Writer-director-star Alex Heller's feature debut is a fictionalized version of Crisis itself what she went through at age 19, when she dropped out of college and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Not the most prominent screen treatment of a serious mental health issue, this amusingly self-deprecating portrayal nonetheless achieves a degree of emotion and depth in a distinctive sensibility you might call Midwestern Sardonic. After a festival, it opens in limited theaters and on demand on March 3.

Clemence Miller (Heller) screams "shipwreck" as soon as she is first seen dragging a campus garbage bag, haranguing everyone she comes across. She then turns that alienating energy back onto her terrified dorm roommate (Taylor Marie Blim), who says, "You're ruining my college experience!" It turns out the roommate has already informed Clem's mother that she turned into "hoarding, stealing, paranoia and screaming." Ergo Sherri (J. Smith-Cameron) bursts in the door, dragging his eldest to suburban Illinois not a moment too soon.

A psychiatrist (Waltrudis Buck) quickly determines that Clem is bipolar - a condition that often manifests early of adulthood – ordering a diet of pills led by lots of lithium to balance out his alternating bouts of mania and depression. But this cocktail requires experimental tweaks, as the side effects can be just as troubling as its symptoms. Meanwhile, our brusque, confrontational, and unfiltered heroine receives a mixed reception from her family, who have sent their adult daughter to the basement, her old bedroom having already been converted into a home office.

Dad Don (Steve Buscemi) is a local schoolteacher whose stubbornly cheerful demeanor barely masks a dismay exhausted. Craft store owner Sherri is determined to take on this latest household challenge, but doesn't bring endless patience to the table — it turns out she has some serious problems to solve herself. Clem's siblings are hardly thrilled about his return: For Carlin (Emily Robinson), the nervous school jerk, the distracting drama of the big sister can only lower his SAT scores, while the athletic teenager Neil ( Wyatt Oleff) tries to completely ignore his presence.

Nevertheless, Clem makes an effort… more or less. She attends scheduled sessions with a therapist (Jon Hudson Odom) and gets a part-time job at a thrift store, trying to befriend initially resistant co-worker Beth (Kyanna Simone). She dutifully lays off non-prescribed drugs and alcohol, at least until she reconnects with her old party partner Ashik (Rajeev Jacob). His fall from the wagon culminates in the closest thing "The Year Between" has to a major setting: a crushed teenage house shindig where much of the cast sees Clem (his self-shaven head temporarily covered in 'a long blond wig) make an impressive show of itself.

Neither as an actor nor a filmmaker does Heller make his on-screen alter ego easy to to love, as Clem clearly is, is a challenge of empathy. As others repeatedly point out, she is capable of doing almost anything "all about me", not excluding a parent's cancer diagnosis. But she's also funny in a deadpan, rolling, girl-brother way (with frequent use of "dude"), and the film never feels cruel in its treatment of her or anyone else. Her coping mechanisms are what they are – and so are everyone who deals with her.

Each character here has a well-delineated eccentric individuality in performance down the line. They're all fun, but not cartoonish, and the prickly dynamic between them feels tart without being cynical. If “The Year Between” is likely to feel a little rushed and underdeveloped – especially seeing Clem in the light at the end of his tunnel – it's mainly because we could easily spend more time with these people than the execution time only allows.

Stylistically too, Heller's debut is full of quirky ideas without being overly showy, lest they overshadow subject matter that is taken seriously despite the superficial snark. This ranges from the various visual strategies of Jason Chiu's cinematography to the airy narrative shorthand provided by several editing sequences from editor Harrison Atkins. E...