Liza Mandelup’s excellent, disconcerting documentary “Jawline” (2019) explored the world of teenage live-broadcasting influencers and the moneymaking apparatus around them. Her follow-up, “Caterpillar,” is also to some degree about a social-media subculture. It involves people who travel abroad to get cosmetic iris implants — that is, to change the color of their eyes. Generally, online testimonials have enticed them.
These implants are not approved for cosmetic use in the United States, because their risks include irreversible vision loss and blindness. The film raises at least two interrelated questions: How many dangers do you have to, ahem, look away from to undergo such a procedure? And is it really worth jeopardizing your sight to change how others see you?
Mandelup’s subject is David Taylor, a Miami man who at the movie’s start is nearing 50 and describes having had a tough life, including what he calls having “to be in the street.” He is biracial and says he faced racism within his family for his darker complexion. Now he wants lighter eyes. “Caterpillar” shows him interacting with his mother, and we see the tension between them. With less-than-ideal sensitivity, she recounts the shock she had when David told her he was gay.
The film follows David to India, where he and his fellow patients seem to rationalize their misgivings. (When one woman asks a doctor if he would ever get the procedure himself, he answers with a simple “no.”) Some of what Mandelup captures is the result of sharp observation, and some of it is incredible chance. This is not the sort of treatment for which you want to hear, afterward, about a mistake with the implants’ packaging.
Caterpillar
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. In theaters.
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