Review: ‘Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey’ Seems Out of Step With Its Period

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Ultra-low-budget features deserve leeway on verisimilitude, but you have to shut your eyes and plug your ears to maintain the illusion that “Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey” is set in 1966, an impression that an opening title card, the occasional glimpsed appliance and a surprisingly small number of the costumes strain to convey.

The film’s writer, director, producer and editor, Terry Sanders, is best known for winning an Oscar with the director Freida Lee Mock for the documentary “Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision” (itself best known for winning the year that “Hoop Dreams” wasn’t nominated). He has said that this script sat dormant for 45 years. Realizing such a long-deferred passion project would be an accomplishment for anyone. Still, it’s hard to ignore that the harshly lit digital cinematography and the acting styles seem wildly out of step with the period, or that Mr. Sanders often clumsily frames his shots — with his lens in his performers’ faces — to hide contemporary backdrops.

“Liza, Liza” is mostly so familiar — a standard teenage-lovers-on-the-lam tale — that it could have been set anywhere. With her boyfriend, Brett (Sean H. Scully), about to move East, Liza (Mikey Madison) runs away with him on a motorcycle trip up Big Sur. There are some signs of the times, including a druggy love-in, references to the draft, a roving gang of vaguely Mansonish thugs and a repeated Buffy Sainte-Marie song. But the question of whether the couple will consummate their relationship isn’t a sufficient source of tension.

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