With Skin Stretched Thin, They Seek Serenity from Trauma | SF DocFest 2026
Playing the best hand that's been dealt.
Dear Moviegoers,
With lit-up joystick knobs looking like fortune-telling crystals, the video games at Clovers, a strip-mall gaming establishment, are played in a legal business limbo between arcade and casino. The customers turned regulars come in not unlike at a bar (or cinema), as an escape from the tribulations of living past their prime. It's a paid escape, of course, an illusion that's built by hopes and dreams and exchanged for cash, but it's also a friendly place, home to conversations and memories.
The master of ceremonies (or games), so to speak, is the manager of the place, Jenny, an ex-prison guard who was recently cut out of her job, for which she took great pride. Her story begins at the prison, making rounds with inmates, happily chatting with them while doing her duties. She's a bright spot of sunshine, as much as a person can be. Her badge removed, she ventures into an "in-between" role at Clovers, continuing her sweet dialogue with others, this time in the free world.
You see, the movie Clovers is an example in life as a metaphor for life, an expression of a person's station in society, no matter their needs or wants. It's interesting how the camera takes charge, moving and whipping around to direct the documented and very real people, to disguise documentary as a scripted story - a heightened truth? This ain't a Werner Herzog joint, nor a Ross Bros. picture, but Clovers does have an eye for charm and an arm for quick and clever composition.
The other lead individual, a real character of sorts, is J.D., a middle-aged true-blue denizen of wherever he traverses, which is usually just Ashboro, North Carolina (where everything takes place). His face and forehead are tattooed, as is the rest of the drug-addled body he lives in. Mental illness and tragedy have plagued him for years, and he's now a walking totem pole, made of stillness and fragile balance. He comes in and out of Clovers more for talk and very much less for gaming, being as much a people person as Jenny. Kind of.
These two people are cosmically linked in how they look forward with sadness and hope, while being planted in time as smiling faces and sage-like counsels. Clovers is at its best as a film when concentrating on their given auras. Trying to tie into a larger and less subtle message is where things waver and wobble.
Shot in the midst of the 2016 Presidential election and the first year of its aftermath, Clovers has an extended sequence where election results are viewed live, at home, by J.D. and the mother of a child they share. Where he is rational about what is likely to happen, she is ecstatic. Life is going to change for her and her own, and in a great way!
If it weren't for this deviation in the story, I'd be calling Clovers fantastic. As it stands, the sequence in question derails the movie, which has to play catch-up for the rest of its time. The tale(s) of Jenny and J.D. continue, and each in ways that confirm their perspectives on themselves and their general paths. One ends in self-realization, the other in self-satisfaction, at least in different ways.
It's a movie about the kind of human motion (not emotion) that's stiff and slow as one can handle. It's a beautiful metaphor for the revolving door of American life, and should be seen from both a personal and a collective mindset. Dammit, if it only weren't for Donald Trump, Clovers could've gone ahead and moved on from its games. 3.5/5
Clovers is coming to the 25th SF Documentary Festival. Click on the banner below for more information.
