It’s that time again! Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: since 1992 my hometown of Indianapolis has presented the Heartland International Film Festival, a multi-day, multi-theater celebration of cinema held every October. Local moviegoers have the opportunity see over a hundred new works in the realms of documentaries, narrative features, shorts, and animation made across multiple continents from myriad points of the human experience. Some participants stop in Indy on their grand tour of Hollywood’s festival circuit; some are local productions on shoestring budgets; and a wide spectrum of claims are staked in the innumerable niches between, projects with well-known actors screening alongside indies with enormous hearts.

After a few brief dalliances with the festival in the past, last year I dove in a bit deeper and caught six movies in all. The fates of those films have varied in the months since — The Promised Land went on to make the Oscar shortlist for Best International Feature; Fancy Dance is now on Apple+ and remains a must-see for fans of Reservation Dogs or Dark Winds; the even tinier Avenue of the Giants has yet to find a distributor and was still assiduously touring as of this past spring; and so on. I appreciated the chance to see new features before they’re released to the world-at-large, and without waiting for pro critics to weigh in first.

Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry. We kick things off with one of this year’s science fiction contestants, which held its official World Premiere right here at Heartland: a small-scale science fiction drama called ReEntry.

Nowadays in pop culture, everyone loves the multiverse! Infinite Earths across infinite timelines have produced seemingly infinite tales in which your favorite characters meet radically Butterfly-Effected versions of themselves, compare and contrast for laughs or cringes, and must scramble to return home before one, both, many, or all their universes are doomed. And yet, those stories typically lead to dialogues and/or fight scenes among the most extreme and/or absurd counterparts. Playing the odds realistically, though, if you went gallivanting around the home bases of every single version of You, which is more likely: bumping heads with the polar-opposite Bizarro-You, or a You with only the most ephemeral of differences? Would that even count as a different You?

In ReEntry, director/producer Brendan Choisnet and writer/producer Daniel Nayeri experiment with the latter proposition. Emily Deschanel, star of Fox’s long-running Bones, is our viewpoint character Ellie, who watches with no small amount of trepidation as her husband Lucas, played by Sam Trammell (True Blood, The Fault in Our Stars), dons a slimmed future-tech astronaut suit and enters an experimental gateway into another universe, assuming all the calculations were nailed to the farthest decimal point. Everyone holds their breath as Lucas disappears into elsewhere, only for him not to reemerge. Tragedy ensues, Ellie is devastated, and life must move on, however reluctantly so. Then one day, suddenly he’s back and the crowd goes wild. And they all lived happily ever after!

HA! If only. Time dilation is an issue up front, which requires some light negotiation among our married couple and their immediate circles. Some tears, some rekindling, and some therapy come into play. Then Ellie begins noticing little things, which gradually snowball as such minutiae tend to in any given relationship, even between partners who haven’t taken impossible space-time jaunts. Usually the scrutiny has to escalate until the affected party is revealed to be a murderer, an alien, an evil twin, a brainwashed Manchurian Candidate, or some other hoax that’s been done to death in countless other stories.

Tales similar to this one have been told, of course — going back at least to the season-4 Twilight Zone episode “The Parallel”, to say nothing of short stories Rod Serling surely read in the SF magazines of his day. Choisnet and Nayeri take a creative risk in approaching the incident from the perspective of the Concerned Wife — often a perfunctory, one-dimensional sidekick in numerous films who represents the trophy at the hero’s finish line or an optional accessory kept at home. Deschanel imbues Ellie with an independent interior life, the depth of an individual history, as a widow who grieves, struggles to cope, rejoices in a miracle, but then has to reconcile her quiet, mounting suspicions of the man who now stands before her. Is he really her husband? More importantly, is he really her husband?

Viewers might hold their breath waiting for Lucas to reveal his “true” self. Is he a knife-wielding maniac from Earth-Lifetime? Or a lizard in a skin-suit from Earth-Visitor? Is he hiding a goatee and a gold sash? Is this a cheap remake of The Astronaut’s Wife? Potential tropes abound, but our filmmakers have something subtler and less melodramatic in mind. Though they hold their cards closely at first, later moments are complemented with restrained visual effects that hint at the bigger picture. Marital stress is to be expected, but Deschanel and Trammell share the rapport of a realistically mature couple dealing not just with clashing memories, but with the possibility that — to employ a cliché that’ll never go out of style — their spouse is no longer the person they married. If one has changed and the other seemingly hasn’t, what do they do now? Are the new differences deal-breakers? Is “close enough” good enough?

Sci-fi fans may have nitpicks, especially when elements bump up against the budget limitations. Some plot points would’ve been complicated if the lab employed a single security guard. Lucas’ seeming demise is publicized by his own employers even though not a single journalist is around to watch Lucas’ exit in person and they could’ve gotten away with an easy cover-up. (But security and press would’ve required paying more extras.) The most unbelievable part comes when Ellie and Lucas, dressed nicely and leaving a fancy party, decide it’s such a nice night that they should just walk the three miles home, and my immediate first question was, “In those shoes?” Somehow the scene does not end with Lucas carrying her down that third mile.

Longtime couples might appreciate ReEntry‘s nuances more than other demographics, though it could also resonate for anyone who knows the creepiness of dating someone who reminded them of an ex — like, intensely so. It stands nicely alongside other low-key near-future tales that don’t begin with some bearded sage growling, “A WAR IS COMING!” and don’t end with billions dead galaxy-wide. The multiverse has room for realities of all shapes and sizes, and so does cinema, as is the entire point of this very festival.

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Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: The chief scene-stealer is Noma Dumezweni (who originated the stage role of adult Hermione in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) as the temperamental scientist who invented the dimension-hopping portal that (apropos of the film’s couplehood themes) resembles a lit-up wedding trellis.

As a trillionaire who buys out her company after the accident, Maulik Pancholy previously recurred on 30 Rock as Jack Donaghy’s fawning assistant Jonathan. Though he learned some of the worst qualities from that former mentor, he’s not entirely irredeemable and represents the hope of an alt-timeline where maybe, just maybe, an extremely rich man can be persuaded to shut up and listen for once.

How about those end credits? I couldn’t tell you if there’s a scene after the ReEntry end credits because they were stopped halfway through as the house lights were raised for a special post-screening Q&A with the principal parties — Emily Deschanel herself and the aforementioned Messrs. Choisnet and Nayeri.

(As with our recent Trek convention, low-light conditions at long distances are anathema to us amateurs.)

Also attending the World Premiere were Choisnet’s mother, sitting somewhere in the way back; and cinematographer Peter Fackler, who joined them onstage for a brief intro before the screening but hung back during the Q&A afterward. The team discussed how the film was inspired by a particular point in Choisnet’s own mental health history, which led to a “What If…?” contemplation of personality changes. They also complained about an old-fashioned CRT TV that just so happened to be in the home where several scenes were shot, which they left in for fun retro ambiance, but which reflected so much of their lighting equipment while shooting that they had to spend extra on CG-papering over its screen.

Post-screening Q&As aren’t unheard of at Heartland — it’s just rare that I happen to buy tickets for showings that include one. This year’s lineup has 17 such occasions planned throughout the 11-day event, at least two more of which are on my itinerary this week. Updates as they occur!