🦋Younger Than Yesterday: "Finding Anissa Jones" Explores Her Back Pages🦋

   "Searching for Bobby Fischer."  "Waiting for Guffman."  Sometimes the individuals behind monikers that headline iconic titles can be absent from practically the entire film, yet represent an ideal that carries the integral vibe of the project.  Whether or not said namesake rolls off the tongue with familiarity, or is trapped in a foggy zone of obscurity is irrelevant, as long as it creates an anticipatory energy that carries the film, as does the name of one child actor in the curiously titled "Finding Anissa Jones."  Writer/actor Tara Langton's debut effort captures the melancholy longing for a time that is utopian if not for only being in the warm, amber-lensed view of the past, all while telling an unconventional buddy road trip story brimming with candor and heart.
    The aunt-nephew journey of the film serves well as the instrument to play a song of both reminiscence and rediscovery - for a sister, and for a mother respectively.  Langton's character is grasping at nostalgia that she is old enough to remember, yet young enough to find bewitching.  Brandon Richard's Austin serves as an interesting foil to Langton's Holly.  As a teenager, he is enamored with the romanticized rebellion of the past.  As a son, he is engrossed in a sentimental mystery to which his heart is drawn.  Strategically placed aspects throughout "Finding Anissa Jones" not only decidedly reinforce this theme, but also add to the authenticity of the piece.   Filmed in Playa Del Rey, a location that lends itself well to this atmospheric wistfulness, the film features scenes around the childhood stomping grounds of the Family Affair star, including her own backyard patio, and neighborhood sidewalk, complete with an authentic carving in the cement of the name "Anissa."  This perhaps holds the most poignancy as the tangible evidence of a moment in time gone by, and almost symbolizes the fleeting nature of these fuzzy recollections.
    At one point in the film, a time capsule is recovered and opened, revealing several trinkets of familiarity.  As a door into the past, the small capsule's contents are tiny flashes in time.  "Like sands through the hourglass," these could be the days of anyone's life.  They belong, however, to a child star who will always remain frozen in youth, much like the photographs and stories that belong to each person.  Everyone has their own Anissa Jones, and finding her is finally understanding that you can't try to catch something that can't be held.  
  During the filming of "Finding Anissa Jones," a butterfly fluttered onto the set of Jones' childhood patio.  Wandering about in flight for an unusually long period of time, the elusive creature gracefully danced off into the sunset....or did she?