“With only their wits and imagination at their disposal and not a lot of money, Courtney Stephens and Callie Hernandez deliver a superior, singular and arresting film.”

Invention is an apt title for Courtney Stephens’s first unabashedly fiction film, as it centers on an electromagnetic ‘healing device’ that might or might not be a scam. But the term also ably describes her (and star, co-writer, co-producer Callie Hernandez’s) approach to the film, as Invention, freely improvised, fourth-wall-breaking and genre-bending, is an exemplar of the micro-budget movement in American indie films. With only their wits and imagination at their disposal and not a lot of money, Stephens and Hernandez deliver a superior, singular and arresting film that will bring credit to both their careers.

Callie Hernandez has been in several mainstream projects with name recognition (La La Land, The Endless, Alien: Romulus, Under The Silver Lake, The Flight Attendant, Shotgun Wedding, etc.). How refreshing it is, then, to see her take center stage in an offbeat and decidedly non-mainstream film like Invention. Stephens stretches herself too, spinning a fiction yarn for once, though elements of non-fiction persist. And the film itself could reasonably be categorized as auto-fiction.

Invention tracks Hernandez playing a version of herself as she deals with the complicated business of losing a parent, with the entire convoluted probate process and the bureaucracy and expenses that come with burying a loved one. Her deceased father’s estate contains not a desirable inheritance but a patent for a medical device that he was trying to get off the ground, which was recalled by the FDA for “reasons” though devotees do swear by its efficacy. The whirring, buzzing glass tube-laden contraption can purportedly be used to cure ailments with 10 minutes of exposure at a time. This is where the auto-fictional elements come to bear. Both Hernandez and Stephens lost their fathers and wanted to make a ‘dead father’ film. Hernandez’s father actually was a doctor who created a medical device, and he appears in the film via archival footage of his TV appearances, but the film is a fictionalized account of Hernandez’s grieving process – she appears as Carrie in the film, not Callie, a subtle mark of distinction.

While the film is named after it, the device is in essence a MacGuffin; Invention is not an adventure or action-thriller film. The device becomes the pretext for Hernandez having a series of interesting encounters with her father’s old acquaintances, friends and business associates, and these meetings form the bulk of the film’s fleet 71-minute runtime. There’s the attorney (James N. Kienitz Wilkins), the patient (Lucy Kaminsky), the investor (Caveh Zahedi) and the three men working in an antique shop (Tony Torn, Paul Kleiman and Sahm McGlynn), the last of whom becomes her romantic partner. These interactions are rife with innuendo and speculation about her father, even conspiracies and allegations that maybe he was ‘offed’, but they reveal just as much about Carrie, who uses them as a crutch to get through the mourning period in the absence of any real catharsis.

Invention’s most confident marker is its refined, unobtrusive direction and staging. Indie films have a predilection for ‘interesting shots’ and tricks that showcase nothing meaningful as much as the director’s inexperience. Stephens demonstrates quiet competence with the austere reserve with which she manages proceedings. She’s aided immensely by the 16mm, grainy, rather old-fashioned cinematography by Rafael Palacio Illingworth which makes the film appear to be almost a period piece. It is then a surprise to see a cutout from Frozen in a scene, reminding us that Invention is very much set in the present and the now.

The film’s sobriety is counter-balanced by a playful gesture, as the artifice of filmmaking is fully made transparent to the viewer – certain scenes are shown being filmed and background sound from the set is actually used in the film – we hear the filmmakers discussing the day’s filming and next day’s plans. The fourth wall breaking might remind viewers of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century, surely a comparison the filmmakers would take. Invention is a miniature, but an arresting, interesting and not indifferently formed object of small-scale, American-indie, micro-budget cinema.