Now, she's defined by her boyfriend's suicide, which she worries she might have caused in some way or another. Whomever Josie may be as her own person is an unknown. She exists as a muse of sorts-to Michael when he drew her and, in the present, to her filmmaker friend (played by Simon Helberg), who's shooting a low-budget movie that seems to have more than a tangential connection to Josie's experiences. Their life together, which we see in flashbacks, is exclusively defined by him-his dreams, his talent, his demons. His name is Michael ( Rhys Wakefield), and the two met when she was modeling for an art class in which he was a participant. She was defined by him even before he took his own life. One of those characters is the young man's live-in girlfriend Josie ( Alia Shawkat), whose life, in a strange way, has come to be defined by the young man. They are desperate to cling to the facts of the young man's life, because the thought of his death is simply too much to bear. They are characters who are in such shock-are such a mess-over the fact of the suicide that they are incapable of even considering what the reason or reasons behind it could be. This is a film about characters confronting the fallout of a suicide. The film, co-written by Tamblyn and Ed Dougherty (based on the novel by Janet Fitch), is not about reasons-either one conclusive one or any odd number of them.

The question may not seem as significant as the one that the character in the room must be asking herself: Why did this young man end his own life? The fact of the suicide does answer another question: Why is this room a mess? It also answers another one: Why is this young woman at this motel, when she could be pretty much anywhere else in the world?

It's a mess, and in its own way, the fact of the suicide becomes its own answer. If we didn't know the context of what happened here, though, it simply would look like a rundown motel room, where someone has started the task of making it look presentable. The first-time director knows that we'll be searching for something in this room, just as the character who has come to this hotel, looking for her own answers, is at the moment. This shot goes on for a notable amount of time, because director Amber Tamblyn wants us to note these details.

Paint it Black by Janet Fitch