I am not nearly clever enough to completely understand what was going on in Tiger Tail in Blue, our second-to-last film on this, the third day of the Wisconsin Film Festival.

The film focuses on Christopher, an Aspiring Writer who waits tables on the night shift at a Chicago restaurant to bring in some money. He comes home in the wee small hours of the morning to find his new wife Melody waiting on the sofa for him. Sometimes she’s awake, sometimes she’s nodded off because her job as a teacher keeps her working all day.

Brandy is a woman on the wait staff at the restaurant where Christopher works. Working together in close quarters, they develop a relationship that brings them closer together day after day until, almost inevitably I suppose, they’re nearly as close as a husband and wife.

And here’s the thing I’m not nearly clever enough to understand: Brandy happens to look a lot like Melody. So much alike that, for the first thirty minutes or so, I thought this was going to be one of those movies where the guy’s living in two alternate universes and we were headed for a Twilight Zone-type ending. And it almost went there when Melody showed up at the restaurant to give Christopher a ride home. He took the ride, they went home and then, when they got there they sat in the car for many long minutes flirting with each other and it didn’t become apparent that somewhere in the drive home she was Brandy and not Melody until finally Christopher got out of the car but she didn’t, and she drove away. Maybe. I’m still not sure what happened in that scene.

Just about the time I wanted to grab My Darling B’s arm to ask her if she thought that maybe Brandy and Melody looked a little too much alike, there was a scene near the end of the movie where Brandy sprouts kinky hair. REALLY kinky hair. Practically an afro. I honestly thought I had missed that little detail before.

I didn’t find out until after the movie, from My Darling B, that Melody and Brandy were played by the same actress until that final scene.

So, this is my confusion: What was so important about making Brandy and Melody look and act exactly alike that required confusing the shit out of me? I’m not getting it.

Add to that a technical gripe: I was never quite sure that the two women looked exactly alike because quite a lot of the movie was so badly lit that I couldn’t make out what was going on. One scene that went on for minutes was just a blank, grayish washout. Quite a lot of other scenes were so glaringly backlit that for long stretches all I could make out were profiles and some bright lights in the background.

In short, the whole “one woman playing two people” gimmick was lost on me. It wasn’t a bad movie; it was pretty good, in fact, but that gimmick is just about all I can think about and it distracts me from anything else that might have been going on. Unless that was the only thing going on. If it was, I would have to change my vote from “pretty good movie” to “just a so-so movie propped up by a gimmick.”