Best and Most Beautiful Things
directed by Garrett Zevgetis
starring Michelle Smith
Only Bright Productions
As you start down the road with Best and Most Beautiful Things you meet young and ambitious Michelle. Legally blind, diagnosed autistic, and stuck in rural Bangor Maine, she comes from a broken marriage. That’s a load of bricks to heap on the back of anyone, but this young lady has dreams. We meet here in the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston where teacher carefully couch their assessments, as they should be. Her future is clearly murky, and she dreams of blowing off this hick town and getting a real job somewhere in the big city.
An offer from a Nickelodeon functionary IMPLIES she could move to LA and get voice over work, and off she goes to the deflating reality of LA’s urban hostility, its scattershot public transit, and its overpriced cost of living. But there’s hope: returning home she meets a guy online (if the computer is an inch away, she can make out letters) and they hit it off. He gives her a flogger for Christmas and they head down the old bondage highway. The question of whether she can consent to sexual relation appears but quickly gets swept away and we come to the payoff in this otherwise typical film: she loves BDSM and she blends right into Bangor’s surprising pan-sexual scene. Good for her; not all of our dreamed reality comes to pass but here’s a gal in a tough spot who finds something she can cling to. Touching and occasionally a bit disturbing; the whole sex thing drops from the sky but Best and Most Beautiful Things offers an extremely personal look into someone elses life. And there’s nothing wrong with a little voyeurism.
