...but a fairly good character study. Slow burn movies are only terrible if they aren't accomplishing anything. "Bokeh" accomplishes exactly what it set out to do -- examine the nature of humanity and human relationships as crystallized by the unlikely tableaux of (most of_ humanity seemingly disappearing and two characters stuck far from home. The movie, and the actors, did an excellent job of it. We all have different thresholds for boredom, granted, but I didn't find it boring in the least, perhaps because I was careful to get an idea of what the movie was about beforehand and therefore never expected it to be an action movie. It did come across as a blatant Icelandic travelogue, which is a bit annoying, but at least Iceland had some really nice vistas.
That said, I did find the ending a bit cheap. While there were hints of loneliness and nihilism toward the end of the movie, there was no indication that Jenai was outright suicidal after just a few weeks of isolation. Riley's incredibly stupid notification -- how could anyone be so dumb as to not realize how it would get Jenai's hopes up? -- seemed like a good reason to dump him, but driving her to suicide wasn't an act that was sufficiently foreshadowed. One short conversation with a depressed old ex-fisherman doesn't come close to selling the idea that Jenai was subsequently full-out suicidal. It was a very depressing, very human ending, to be sure, but I don't think the filmmakers earned that conclusion.
Incidentally, my theory about everyone disappearing is that they just went into hiding to keep away from the pretentious hipster Riley. The old man thought he was safe but, nope, Riley shows up on his remote doorstep. You could see the shock and horror in his reaction to seeing that pretentious hipster, and his decision to quit this life that very night made sense. It's just disappointing that it took Jenai, who seemed intelligent, so long to seek out her own means of escaping him. Tragic, in fact. Had she just decided to find a boat and fled, she'd have lived a long and happy life.
(It did strike me as a significant error that they didn't try to find one and learn to pilot it in the safety of the nearby waters before setting out. Boats aren't hard to steer if you rely on the engine rather than the sails, and fairly safe to practice with until you master it. Just find some yacht, head south for a while, then turn west to reach North America, since that's where they were from.)
That said, I did find the ending a bit cheap. While there were hints of loneliness and nihilism toward the end of the movie, there was no indication that Jenai was outright suicidal after just a few weeks of isolation. Riley's incredibly stupid notification -- how could anyone be so dumb as to not realize how it would get Jenai's hopes up? -- seemed like a good reason to dump him, but driving her to suicide wasn't an act that was sufficiently foreshadowed. One short conversation with a depressed old ex-fisherman doesn't come close to selling the idea that Jenai was subsequently full-out suicidal. It was a very depressing, very human ending, to be sure, but I don't think the filmmakers earned that conclusion.
Incidentally, my theory about everyone disappearing is that they just went into hiding to keep away from the pretentious hipster Riley. The old man thought he was safe but, nope, Riley shows up on his remote doorstep. You could see the shock and horror in his reaction to seeing that pretentious hipster, and his decision to quit this life that very night made sense. It's just disappointing that it took Jenai, who seemed intelligent, so long to seek out her own means of escaping him. Tragic, in fact. Had she just decided to find a boat and fled, she'd have lived a long and happy life.
(It did strike me as a significant error that they didn't try to find one and learn to pilot it in the safety of the nearby waters before setting out. Boats aren't hard to steer if you rely on the engine rather than the sails, and fairly safe to practice with until you master it. Just find some yacht, head south for a while, then turn west to reach North America, since that's where they were from.)