Lotawana

A story as old as time: boy meets girl, invites her to live with him on his boat and embrace a vagabond existence, until real life inevitably intrudes.

“Lotawana,” named after one of the Lakes of the Ozarks, is obviously a labor of love. Shot by writer/director/editor/cinematographer Trevor Hawkins, who mortgaged his house on Lake Lotawana to finance the project, it’s a breathtakingly gorgeous movie that is basically a love letter to this place and the people who abide there.

If was running the Missouri tourist bureau, I’d be promoting the hell out of this film.

And talk about being a family affair: Hawkins’ wife, Cori Jo Hawkins, served as co-producer, makeup and wardrobe, and stars Todd Blubaugh and Nicola Collie fell in love while making the movie, and are now married.

Blubaugh plays Forrest, a young man who has scrapped the trappings of normal society to live on his small sailboat on the lake. He works itinerantly, painting other people’s boats or whatnot, needing just enough cash for food and gas for the motorcycle he uses for trips into town.

Forrest has checked out, and is in no hurry to check back in.

One day he runs into Everly (Collie), a New Zealand girl, and as quick as that she’s living with him on his boat, a fast but not hurried dance of romance. It goes from fling to thing, and when he pops the big question of asking her to live with him permanently, she responds that she thought that’s what they’re already doing.

This is a movie of emotions and beautiful imagery, with long wordless stretches that are in no rush to resume the dialogue scenes. Despite being lake-set, it has an oceanic sense of tidal rhythms, as their closeness will be interrupted with moods of friction and alienation from each other, if just for a time. They flow together, the drift away from the other and back again.

Blubaugh has a great look for movies: lean, handsome in a feral sort of way, with a prominent brow and wavy long hair tied back. For some reason I kept picturing him playing cowboy in a Western or other period piece — his face has a timeless quality.

Collie, by contrast, seems like a very modern woman, playing Everly as someone who’s willing to embrace Forrest’s lifestyle, but who has enough sense of independence and grit to begin insisting, gently and then more forcefully, that this sort of life has to be transitory.

He thinks of himself as a good guy, but when push comes to shove he reverts to boyish tropes, saying that he thought they were on the same team — by which, he means his team, with himself as the captain calling the shots.

The tiny cabin belowdecks at first seems intimate and private, but as their challenges made takes on a claustraphobic edge, their meager belongings insufficient and the proximity slowly more suffocating. The boat becomes a third character in their relationship.

The expected sort of developments happen, big life stuff that will challenge their extended adolescent adventure. Money starts to run tight, he resists taking a full-time job, because that would mean giving in to responsibility rather than dabbling in it, and she grows resentful of their lack of options. She starts sneaking into the big lakeside houses to pilfer food, and that ends up right about where you’d expect.

There really aren’t any surprises in “Lotawana.” It’s a soulful journey without a lot of real storytelling. You have to just settle in, feel the music of these two people and their unconventional romance, and bask in the lovely imagery of water, wind and sunlight. It wasn’t quite enough for me, but maybe will be for you.