Not too long ago, I watched a screener of Princeton Holt’s low-budget drama Cookies & Cream. Though there were pretty dramatic sound issues (it seemed like the entire movie was distractingly overdubbed, something the filmmaker acknowledged he’s been trying to rectify), I was nonetheless won over by Holt’s handling of a story that I hadn’t seen on screen before. Cookies & Cream follows a young woman who works in the porn industry as she tries to forge genuine connections with a variety of different men in the real world. Understandably, this causes much friction, as she can’t seem to find a guy who isn’t either grotesquely turned on by this news or who shuts down completely when he finds out about it.
With Cookies & Cream, Holt applies the micro-aesthetics of the Mumblecore genre to a potentially risque topic, yet he never succumbs to sensationalism, instead choosing to follow the humane, realistic paths that this set-up might actually take. The lead performance by Jace Nicole only enhances the realism. While Steven Soderbergh had other targets in mind with The Girlfriend Experience, Cookies & Cream remains a more honest and absorbing exploration of this undeniably loaded topic. It’s a great example of what tiny budget cinema can—and should—do.
The film screens tonight at 9pm as part of Anthology Film Archives‘ “New Filmmakers” summer festival.
— Michael Tully
