Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry, 2018)

This is without question Perry's most emotionally direct film since The Color Wheel, although making that statement sounds unnecessarily evaluative. I quite appreciated the fact that Listen Up Philip and Queen of Earth played their cards close to the vest, as it were, operating more in a register of allusion and, to an extent, guardedness. While one could possibly say that Her Smell is "about" Courtney Love in a manner similar to how Listen Up Philip is "about" Philip Roth, the similarities are just a jumping-off point for the creation of a highly unique character and her complex "journey," which is honestly more like a tornado that sweeps up and spits out all those in its path.

Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss) is a booze-and-drug fueled punk rock artist whose art seems to emerge from the place of her obvious emotional damage. One of the wisely-unspoken subtexts thrumming throughout Her Smell is that this is a narrative that is not only accepted but tacitly encouraged when it comes to male "geniuses" but is ultimately intolerable from women. While Perry shows us the "good times" (success, relatively high functioning) in boxy video clips from an interpolated rockumentary, we are really joining the saga of Something She, the band, as it's edging toward collapse. Becky's bandmates Marielle (Agyness Deyn) and Ali (Gayle Rankin) can no longer handle Becky's abuse and erratic behavior. Becky's ex-partner Danny (Dan Stevens) is working to parent his and Becky's daughter Tama (Daisy Pugh-Weiss) while Mom is "gone" physically, mentally, or both. And many others are dragged into her tumultuous orbit, either willingly (Eric Stoltz's manager), by blood (Virginia Madsen as Becky's mom), or by sheer happenstance (labelmates the Akergirls -- Cara Delevingne, Ashley Benson, and Dylan Gelula).

But there are several things that make Her Smell something special, miles away from the cliche it and its subject could have been. One of them, of course, is Moss's ferocious performance. It's easy to be unlikable, but her Becky is a hyper-articulate mess, a narcissistic motormouth who uses her intellect and her aggression to shove everyone away from her. As fashioned by Perry and Moss, it's more than plausible that people refuse to walk away from Becky for so long. It's so evident that there is a tender, fascinating human being lurking beneath the armor of her damage.

Another major factor in Her Smell's success, one of its biggest virtues, is its cinematography by Sean Price Williams. Much as he did with the Safdie brothers' Good Time, Williams describes space is electric, dense, and always on the verge of caving in. Much of Her Smell takes place backstage at a gig, and nearly all of it is shot indoors. And within these tight spaces, Williams maneuvers with precise micro-gestures that have the feel of dramatic sweep. This, combined with Ryan Price's metallic, all-enveloping sound design, produce an astonishing immediacy, the sense of being clamped inside a discomfiting headspace and simply having to ride it out.

Finally, and perhaps above all, [SPOILER], Perry has the courage to avoid the cynicism of the moment and embrace redemption. Becky is not, in the end, a rock and roll cliche. She gets sober and, as a result, has to face up to who she really is and how she engineered her own loneliness. As her friends and her family gradually return to her life, Becky becomes slightly more confident, but she is also clearly afraid. For the first time, she is risking being abandoned, rather than striking first. In one of the most affecting moments of Her Smell, Becky assembles her old women friends backstage for a sister circle, and for the first time, we learn everyone's given names. All masks are dropped. And then, without the protection of a persona, Becky Something -- Rebecca Adamczyk -- takes the stage.