Routine Pleasures

Black Bear (Lawrence Michael Levine, 2020)

Back in 2014, I saw Levine's film Wild Canaries, but I didn't remember much about it except that I did not like it. When I looked back at my review, it all came back to me. It's a seriocomic caper film slathered in Hitchcock and Rivette references, and that seems to be a big part of what won it admirers when it debuted. But Wild Canaries struck me as incredibly arch and knowing, even as it was working overtime to seem insouciant, anarchic . . . well, wild. In short, it was the sort of film that's obviously made by cinephiles, but it's not at all clear that they have anything much to say. It's like watching a a theatrical adaptation of a resumé.

That's pretty much the case with Black Bear as well. It's certainly "accomplished." It's got all the right moves, aping the structural play and halfway-point reconfiguration one finds in Apichatpong or Hong Sangsoo films. It melds the fictional world with a self-reflexive (ostensible) documentation of its own making, like any number of Iranian masterworks. And within that pseudo-self-reflexive framework, Christopher Abbott's director-character pulls a performance out of lead actress Allison (Aubrey Plaza) that is worthy of prime Cassavetes. 

But none of these gestures really adds up to anything apart from its own presence as a signifier. In fact, Plaza's role in Black Bear is the real point of rupture here, since the film's overall dishonesty siphons off power from what would otherwise be a career-best performance. It's frustrating how "mumblecore" has evolved into a kind of actors'-improv cinema. Say what you want about Alex Ross Perry's films, but the damn things are scripted.

Run (Aneesh Chaganty, 2020)

It's easy to get annoyed with Sarah Paulson for her deep commitment to Ryan Murphy. But if you set aside the specific problems in Murphy's work -- mainly that it's terrible -- and consider the matter systemically, it makes much more sense. Given the fact that Hollywood routinely puts its leading women out to pasture at age 40, how else would someone like Paulson ever get to play such juicy roles? Never cut out to be a national sweetheart like Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock, she's also not bizarre enough to carve out a niche like Tilda Swinton. If the American Horror Story franchise has shown anything, it's that Paulson has a flair for genre work. She's quite adept at mimicking button-down normalcy while signalling that something is just slightly off.

Run is a film that was originally slated for either a Mothers' Day or a January 2021 theatrical release, and both COVID-scrapped strategies pinpoint just what sort of movie this is. It's suffocating, small-town horror, based on an apparently devoted mother (Paulson) who has given her life to caring for her chronically ill, wheelchair-bound daughter Chloe (newcomer Kiera Allen). But as Chloe reaches adulthood and plans to leave home to attend the University of Washington, some fissures begin to appear in the mother-daughter relationship. Parental over-involvement, along with the smothering intimacy of village life, become the basis for the terror of losing one's identity, making Run, in its own odd way, a sort of Get Out about disability.

Allen, who is in fact a wheelchair-user with very limited mobility, is a star in the making, more than holding her own against Paulson. Being a first-time film actor helps her here, since her Chloe conveys both determination and innocence, the combination of an adult desire for independence and the sudden realization that this isn't just a matter of starting a new life, but of life and death. Also, Allen appears to perform many of her own stunts, which obviates political objections while also making Run tense as hell. Just a nifty little B-filck.

Happiest Season (Clea DuVall, 2020)

"It's a Meet the Parents, Family Stone sorta thing, only gay. Whattya need, a roadmap?" When it comes to the standard-issue holiday movie, there aren't many boxes that Happiest Season fails to check. Romantic partner (Mackenzie Davis) who becomes someone different when back in the home of their parents (Mary Steenburgen and Victor Garber); an old, strange sibling rivalry (in this case, with high power lawyer-turned-mom Alison Brie); the oddball sibling (Mary Holland) who barely seems like she's part of the family at all; and the unexpected hometown encounter with an old flame that produces jealousy and friction. In that last case, there's the Male Category (Jake McDorman) and the Female Category (Aubrey Plaza).

In the middle of it all is Abby (Kristin Stewart), a PhD candidate in Art History who is planning to ask her longtime girlfriend to marry her, only to learn -- surprise! -- her lover's family doesn't know she's gay, and are rich conservatives. Happiest Season deals with this regrettably common trauma as a form of bittersweet holiday comedy, mainly by sticking to the hetero Christmas movie genre path. DuVall also adds a gay best friend (Dan Levy) who remarks on the heteronormativity of the whole thing. 

But even taken on its own terms, Happiest Season has an emotional crater at its center. Harper (Davis) does rotten things because she's in the closet, and we're supposed to understand her cowardice up to a point. But the film never shows us exactly what's so wonderful about Harper in the first place. Was I the only one expecting Abby to drop the WASPy Baxterette and get together with Plaza's hip doctor?