Directed by: Courtney Stephens
Distributed by: Mubi
Written by Taylor Baker
67/100
“Invention” opens in the wake of loss. A daughter must grapple with her father’s complicated legacy—from the mundane decision of whether to purchase an urn or accept him in the simple black box provided by the funeral home, to the weightier question of what to do with his invention for “vibrational healing.”
Courtney Stephens’ experimental film, clocking in at a lean 72 minutes, occupies a liminal space between documentary and fiction. It incorporates archival footage of actress Callie Hernandez’s actual father alongside improvised scenes that feel less like constructed narrative and more like eavesdropped conversations. The result is a work that feels both deeply personal and universally familiar—an exercise in processing grief that refuses to settle into conventional storytelling modes.
Hernandez navigates the film with remarkable subtlety, neither overplaying nor underplaying the emotional terrain. As she moves through her father’s former home, preparing it for new tenants, meeting with the men who knew him—investors, believers, collaborators in building the titular invention—she embodies that particular and unique exhaustion that next of kin experience coordinating post-funeral logistics. Each decision carries weight: whether to scatter ashes by a riverside, whether to accept an offer to purchase her father’s questionable invention, whether to inch toward a man beckoning to her from the porch after their night together.
The handheld cinematography creates an intimate, secretive quality, as if we’re witnessing memories in the process of forming. This isn’t the polished grief of Hollywood but something rawer and more recognizable. In its blending of forms and its resistance to easy categorization, “Invention” recalls recent micro-budget experiments like “Fourteen”—films that use their limitations as aesthetic choices rather than obstacles.
What emerges is neither purely documentary nor entirely fictional but, as its title suggests, an invention unto itself. It’s a film about the descendants of snake oil salesmen and big dreamers, about the complicated inheritances we receive from our parents beyond mere objects. Stephens has crafted something deceptively simple that navigates its serious material with a light, watchable touch—a small film that understands sometimes the most profound processing happens in the margins, between the official ceremonies and the final decisions.
“Invention” is an exercise in catharsis that extends its invitation to the audience: come sit with uncertainty, with the mess of loss, with the strange comedy of sorting through what remains.
“Invention” Trailer
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