So many directors have attempted to accurately capture the drift and disaffection of post-collegiate life in their films. In the groundbreaking new indie film, Beeswax, director Andrew Bujalski actually does it. Critics around the nation are crediting the film’s cast of non-professional (but carefully cast) actors, including Tilly Hatcher who has been a paraplegic since age 13 due to a spinal tumor and her real life twin sister Maggie Hatcher.

In real life, Tilly is a teacher and Maggie an emergency-room doctor. So how did Bujalski stumble up on the sisters and choose them to star in his flick? Filmmaker Chantal Akerman, Bujalski’s advisor at Harvard, spotted Maggie walking by one day and told him to cast her in his thesis film. Shortly after that, Bujalski met Maggie's twin, Tilly, which started him on the path of wanting to make "a Maggie and Tilly movie.” Beeswax is the result, in part, of that desire.

In the movie, the third directed by Andrew Bujalski, Jeannie (played by Tilly) and Lauren (played by Maggie) live in Austin under the same roof and working through the difficult matter of re-negotiating a variety of personal and professional relationships. Lauren is newly single and between jobs when she is presented with a work opportunity that would require leaving the country. Jeannie runs a vintage boutique and suspects that her estranged friend and business partner is plotting a lawsuit.

Critics are reacting positively to the authentic depiction of Jeannie as simultaneously impossible, wonderful and vulnerable—in other words, she’s a lot like the rest of us.

“Perhaps the most refreshing element of Beeswax is that Jeannie's paraplegic condition is never a focus in the script,” Mike Goodridge writes in his review of the film on screendaily.com. “She ably moves around in her wheelchair, disassembles and reassembles the chair to drive, and gets leg massages at the end of a tiring day. But first and foremost she is a fully functioning character – running a business, rekindling an old love, fighting with friends, annoying her employees. Disabled advocacy groups around the world will welcome Beeswax.”

Despite the unembellished handling of Jeannie’s disability, Bujalski points to working with an actress with a disability as central to the outcome of the film. “…working with somebody who really is in the chair is a completely different experience than it would be trying to replicate that with an actor.”

“In fact, it probably made it a lot easier for us to treat it matter-of-factly in the film—because it was matter-of-fact! And of course we also got the best technical advisor in the world right there. We could ask Tilly about all the logistics, ‘Alright, how would you navigate this space?’ and it informs how we block the shot,” he said. “A lot of times when you’re trying to figure out how a scene should move, there’s not an obvious answer. The chair sometimes would force answers upon us, which was sometimes a nice limitation to work with. And then you can kind of build the scene from there, and use that to make the scene feel more real.”

When asked about her experience on set, Tilly delivers similar sentiments. “Usually when someone’s in a wheelchair in a movie it’s an able-bodied actor doing it,” she said. “For me, there’s a genuine obliviousness to it. It was never our intent to make a statement. But subconsciously there are things you want to convey…”

Perhaps that subtlety helps Beeswax stand out and is part of the reason it becomes quite obvious quickly on in the film that Beeswax isn’t at all about disabilities. And critics are taking note. In their review of the movie and of Tilly’s performance, NJ.com noted, “There is no discussion of her disability in the film, however. No pity, no pathos, no saccharine back story, no pun intended. She is treated as a person who simply navigates the world from a sitting position, someone with all the appetites, ambitions and foibles of vertical people. The filmmaker does not trumpet this. So we will. Bravo, Mr. Bujalski.”

Beeswax by Andrew Bujalski opens in New York on August 7, 2009 at Film Forum.

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