Heartland: Dirty Laundry

Two best buds contemplate their future in a laundromat -- while mysteriously compelled to always tell the truth -- in this sensitive and funny dramedy.

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“Dirty Laundry” is a story of best friends, and secrets, and the fundamental importance of truth in relationships.

Hoosier filmmaker Rocky Walls — “More Than Corn,” “IMBPREZ” — is back with another impressive feature, in this case a narrative rather than his usual documentary format. Set in Springfield, Ind., it’s the two story of two best buds and wannabe business partners who are approaching a crisis point in their friendship.

It’s the sort of thing where they will either journey on together in some way the rest of their lives, or things will slowly — or more quickly — go kaput.

The title comes from the setting, a laundromat where Kyle Miller (Mitchell Wray) and Eric Hernandez (Charlie Shultz) meet up to wash their tighty-whities, commiserate as 20-ish young men, and work on their business plan. The owner helpfully lets them stay late and lock the place up themselves.

Kyle is the guy with dreams, a big mouth and a charismatic way about him; Eric is the quieter artistic type, the sort who takes Kyle’s ideas and turns them into something tangible and beautiful. The company they want to launch — potentially to be called Prop Pop, though they’re still noodling with it — is for on-the-go backgrounds and settings for video and film shoots. They came up with the idea a couple of years ago when they were drama students in high school.

Eric, who gave up on going to college to work on the plan, has reached the point of telling Kyle he’s quitting — at the behest of his dad (Ian Cruz), an old-school work-hard/get-ahead type. Kyle has reached exactly the opposite decision, putting in his notice at his coffee shop barista gig so he can dive into Prop Pop full-time.

A bit of the supernatural enters the proceedings when a mysterious stranger (Deborah Asante) appears, doing magic tricks with the quarters they use for the washers and dryers, telling them truth and friendship are two sides of the same coin. After using them in the machines, the guys realize they cannot tell a lie.

Every word they utter must be the truth, no matter how hard they try.

No growing noses or anything — and it’s not like they’re compelled to suddenly blurt out everything inside their brain they’d rather not say. The boys quickly get and discard the idea of predicting the Powerball or piercing unsolved crimes; if it’s not something they already know, they can’t speak it. Neither can they say an untruth.

This leads to some painful confrontations about their own relationship, the ones with their parents and girlfriends, and how they feel about going into business together.

Walls puts a lot of lovely colors and nuance into their conversation. I loved the part where Kyle, long estranged form his dad, speaks of a frayed memory of his old man buying them grape sodas whenever they stopped at a gas station. It’s something that may have only happened five or six times in is life, Kyle admits, but it’s become the centerpiece of the small bank of memories he holds for his father.

They talk about the greatness of the movie “The Princess Bride,” and Eric teases Kyle about how his enthusiasm can sometimes overwhelm what comes out of his mouth. “You have this way of saying things that people only say in books and movies,” also a bit of a nod to the screenwriter’s perpetual challenge of not crafting dialogue that sounds written.

Wray and Shultz both give sensitive, earnest performances as a pair of beta male types — that’s not an insult; I identify — contemplating their future and whether that includes a continued partnership of some sort. Though firmly in the comedy mold, things get more and more serious as the film goes on, until it’s full-on tears and warm feelings territory.

Walls continues to build his resume as one of the most essential figures making movies in, about, and for Indiana.