If Miranda July ever has a creative renaissance involving Crayola, it’s likely the product will resemble The Toe Tactic. Emily Hubley’s twee-as-can-be feature debut may have a clear protagonist — a mournful member of NYC’s creative underclass named Mona Peek — but it’s essentially a tapestry of characters using alternative methods to communicate their precious eccentricities. Overseeing these individuals are four animated, card-playing dogs who double as the Greek chorus and a cutesy version of the three witches in Macbeth. In exploring the idea of art as a coping mechanism, Tactic spins an inspired mess of life philosophies, surveying nihilism, cause and effect, and fate. Hubley captures the capricious, fleeting quality of life, yet The Toe Tactic’s effect is equally ephemeral. With all due respect to Hubley’s mysterious collage of sentient ideas, The Toe Tactic is the type of incoherent film that was most likely storyboarded in a personal diary.
January 28-February 2 at MoMA