Review: 'Secret Mall Apartment' captures a clever artists' project, but doesn't go deep into why it happened
The documentary “Secret Mall Apartment” captures how a group of artists created a space to live, and simulate a home, in an unused space in a New England shopping mall — but the movie is so intent on showing how they did it, they give short shrift to the question of why they did it.
The project started in 2003, shortly after the Providence Place Mall opened in Providence, Rhode Island. Eight people — Michael Townsend, an art teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design, and some friends and students, along with his then-wife, Ardriana Valdez-Young — found the space, in a corner created by the mall’s odd architecture, where they could set up a place of their own.
Of course, they have a cheap camera to capture their actions on video, the footage from which director Jeremy Workman uses to tell much of the story.
The artists string an extension cord to bring electricity to the space. They go to the Salvation Army thrift store for a couch and other furniture. And, most importantly, they figure out how to get in with these bulky items without attracting the attention of the mall’s security team.
Through interviews with the artists themselves, Workman captures the excitement and adventure of their hidden art project, as the eight of them describe their close calls and their life hacks — like the amount of movie-theater popcorn they ate while staying there.
Townsend is essentially the hero of the piece, and Workman devotes a great deal of time to what’s essentialy the art teacher’s day job: Creating murals out of masking tape for the local children’s hospital, and teaching the young patients to join in — creating a bit of whimsy and joy in a sad and scary place.
But when Workman could dig a bit deeper, asking Townsend and the others to explore what was behind the apartment project — beyond the facile discussions of gentrification, urban blight and rampant capitalism — the movie instead becomes a parody of itself. The second half of the documentary consists of an effort by the production to duplicate the apartment on a soundstage, a move that’s too cutesy for the movie’s own good. In the end, the real secrets of “Secret Mall Apartment” remain frustratingly underexplored.
——
‘Secret Mall Apartment’
★★1/2
Opens Friday, May 9, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for language and some references to drug use. Running time: 92 minutes.