Boston Underground Film Festival 2009

With a cast comprised mostly of off-the-street non-professional actors, Chusy Haney-Jardine takes us on a beautiful, meditative, and completely meandering madcap journey through redneck sub-culture in the Anywhere town of Asheville, North Carolina.

A tale told in three tangential parts, the film opens with “Penance,” wherein a hillbilly couple becomes estranged when the boyfriend finds a pistachio in her trailer, triggering a hilariously surreal pastiche of paranoid posturing involving an al Qaeda conspiracy intended to demolish the Anywhere towns of America. Redneck subtitles abound, as do beautiful fucking mustaches.

“Loss” is a touching story about a recently orphaned girl (played by the one professional actor in the film, Haney-Jardine’s daughter Perla), her hippie uncle, a stash of pot brownies and the debunking of the tooth fairy. “Ignorance” follows the racial awakening of a white man who, upon realizing he has no black friends, attempts to remedy this.

Garnering Quentin Tarantino’s seal of approval (and a Special Jury Prize!) at Sundance 2008, Anywhere, USA delivers paroxysms of laughter and is absolutely the kind of film intended to be seen in a large dark theater packed with strangers. It’s daring, original, absurd, and exemplifies true independent filmmaking.

-Nicole McConvery