He's 'Tre' Anti-Romantic
Eric Byler picks up where 'Charlotte Sometimes' left off with a darker tale of love and infidelity.
In Eric Byler's "Tre," it's all about the sensation of touch and the chemical reactions it unleashes. Early on, the question is posed: can you imagine someone you love betraying you with someone else for 10 seconds? So in a drug addled moment lit by a weak beam from a flashlight, Tre (Daniel Cariaga) decides to try - he touches Kakela's (Kimberly-Rose Wolter) hand and counts to 10.
The screen sizzles with currents of energy between Tre and his best friend's fiancée and the dynamics of four friends living under the same roof is forever changed.
"I wanted to capture the surprise, the discovery of attraction that sometimes comes with the sensation of touch," said Byler, 35, by phone from Washington, D.C. where he is currently leading a revolution (more on that later).
In "Tre" truth and lies slide back and forth between intersecting lives like in Byler's 2002 breakout film "Charlotte Sometimes." He calls this one a mini sequel and revisits some similar themes of love and infidelity that made his name so synonymous with controversy (remember the boycott campaign because the Asian American guy in the film didn't get the girl?)
The filmmaker, who identifies as Hapa, is inspired by truth in everyday life. You know, the kind of truth that was "inherited from the sexual revolution - prolonged periods of courtship and emotional train wrecks," he said.
"After 'Charlotte Sometimes,' I was just dying to make movies," said Byler, who has since worked on three projects he couldn't turn down: "Americanese," a PBS pilot called "My Life Disoriented" and "Tre." He also worked on a script for a Showtime miniseries called "Infidelity," which has not yet been made.
He called this period of creativity a "frenzy of kinetic energy" and "the last gasp of my 20s."
"Charlotte Sometimes" was a breakthrough, but there was another story knocking around Byler's mind - a darker version of the idyllic love formed between "Charlotte Sometimes" actors Michael Idemoto and Eugenia Yuan. He had developed a darker character for Idemoto who in the original script went closer to the edge of psychological breakdown, but the actor brought his own sense of dignity to the film that precluded the ending, so Byler threw out the last 15 pages of the script and filmed an impromptu ending.
"I was wise enough to let things develop organically and capture truth rather than fiction," said Byler. "Tre was a part of my psyche."
Tre, on the other hand, is the kind of character armchair psychologists would spend hours trying to peel away the protective layers. He is also the kind of guy you would avoid eye contact with if he were walking towards you. Tattooed and armed with an acidic tongue, he cuts down his victims and then dominates them.
"Tre is a character who always doubted that if they're worthy of love. He's aggressive and manipulative because he has an innate sense of competing for love," said Byler. "He builds up this self-doubt fortress to protect himself but in his heart of hearts, he fears that he is unworthy of love."
When Tre and Kakela touch, the tension explodes and leads up to a surprise ending that will leave you breathless.
"At some screenings, no matter how intrusive [Tre's] questions got, people would still laugh. Then we knew that it was an audience of anti-romantics," said Byler, who again left the ending for the actor to determine.
Since "Charlotte Sometimes," APA filmmakers approached Byler to say the film influenced them to look deeper than the color of their skin and intergenerational conflicts. Byler calls it the "license to look inwards."
He will be screening "Tre" at the upcoming San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival where it is up for a Best Narrative Film award, but he will also be taking part in a fundraiser for APAs for Progress, a national organization that encourages electoral empowerment.
Byler was spurred into action by the now infamous "Macaca" slur that rolled off of the tongue of then Virginia Sen. George Allen during his recent reelection campaign. The filmmaker was in Los Angeles at the time, but he returned to his home to start a grassroots revolution, which will be the subject of his next project - a documentary.
"Representation in the media is good, but representation in politics is better," said Byler.
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