'Test Pattern': Strong Performances Steady A Devastating Sexual Assault Drama

Shatara Michelle Ford’s directorial feature debut “Test Pattern” arrives as more than a mere test run. A devastating drama concerning sexual assault, the modest 82-minute film colors how Evan and Renesha’s perfect love story is put on pause by a traumatic event. Evan (a fully felt Will Brill), cute in his awkwardness, is an amiable tattoo artist with surfer dude vibes. The type of guy who brings a tidy plant as a gift to a tidy dinner date. Renesha (a revelatory Brittany S. Hall) is an assuredly pointed corporate black woman living in a modern luxe condo with a kitchen and dining room that looks closer to a chic downtown restaurant than a home. The pair fall hard and fast for each other.

With her lithe script, Michelle Ford allows Evan and Renesha’s relationship to gestate organically. They first meet at a bar. Then at the local grocery store. Then at her aforementioned apartment, and soon they’re living together in a cozy house. Michelle Ford is rarely obtrusive in her dialogue. She lays the groundwork for how much time has elapsed by way of Renesha changing her hair here, adding a tattoo sleeve there, and Evan brandishing a mustache later. Without losing the familiar beats of their blissful love affair, the writing allows us to weave, with great speed, to the night that’ll burn their tranquility asunder.

Their Edenic existence crumbles when Renesha accompanies her friend Amber (Gail Bean) on a girl’s night out, wherein they meet a couple of flirtatious white tech bros. The entry point Michelle Ford uses for their paths to cross, a conversation concerning Trump and the political views black people must withhold from their white workplaces, strikes a true note, but one that sounds forced. Both bros are forward in their advances. One, however, takes a strong interest in Renesha. Without revealing too much, watching Renesha’s night unfold is akin to watching an Ouija board spell out its message. The dread forms in the knowability yet the unknowability of what will be revealed. The woozy closure to the evening bursts in a jagged kinetic stream of DP Ludovica Isidori’s arresting red images. And in the aftermath, is Renesha’s tangible psychological pain.

How Evan and Renesha later navigate Texas’ hospital system in search of a rape kit reminds one of Eliza Hittman’s abortion drama “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” (to be clear, “Test Pattern” premiered at Blackstar Film Festival 2019, several months before Hittman’s film). As Evan drags Renesha from hospital to hospital, he is slowly consumed by his frustration with this inert bureaucracy process. One that leverages the victim’s anguish for financial profit, that’s undersupplied and understaffed, and slow-moving. His laidback aura melts into a beleaguered shell. Meanwhile, Renesha’s mind, recalls not just that night but reminiscences about the happy earlier memories with Evan. In these lifeboats from the past, Robert Ouyang Rusli’s score flutters, the sunlight dances on the lens, and a cool nostalgic oasis forms, only to knock us back into the desperate realities of the present.

Michelle Ford is fantastic at contextualizing complex layers in the briefest of snapshots. While part of Evan’s frustration stems from this unfair system, a tiny slice of his exacerbation also arises from a sense of ownership of Renesha’s body. For instance, in one scene, he jokes that he wants to mark her (presumably with a tattoo). Now, in the present-day, he seethes from how that convent, the couple’s seemingly faultless order, feels broken.