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Similar to the little girl in the famous nursery rhyme, this film has its moments of greatness and its moments of disappointment. In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s original poem, when it’s good, it’s very good, but when it’s bad, it’s quite awkward and self-indulgent. However, the positive aspects of the film outweigh the negatives, and it’s worth noting that this is writer-director-co-star Alice Englert’s first feature, and she should be commended for taking some bold, if not always successful, risks.
Englert wisely chose Jennifer Connelly to play the lead role, which turned out to be one of her most impressive performances in recent years. Connelly portrays Lucy, a former child star who, like the actress herself, harbors deep anger and resentment towards her parents, her ex-husband (who is never seen), and even her own daughter Dylan (played by Englert), who is currently working as a stunt double in New Zealand. At the start of the story, Lucy phones Dylan from Oregon to inform her that she will be unreachable for some time as she checks into a retreat, but the call is interrupted and the connection is poor.
During the retreat, centered on the clichés and clichés preached by guru Elon Bello (Ben Whishaw), Lucy has trouble sleeping and develops a strong and possibly well-founded dislike for narcissistic model Beverly (Dasha Nekrasova). The conversation, whether written by Englert or improvised by the actors, cleverly satirizes pseudo-mystical jargon, but takes an uncomfortable turn when it delves into Lucy’s genuine suffering, leading to a shocking act of violence.
The movie could have been a well-structured short if it had only covered the retreat and stopped at the violent moment. However, Englert continuously switches to scenes of Dylan’s unhappy film set, where she has an affair with an actor and gets injured on the job. (The doctor who treats her, briefly seen in one shot, is actually Englert’s real-life mother and director, Jane Campion.) After flying back to the US to support her mother Lucy, Dylan and Lucy argue and snipe at each other in a believable mother-daughter dynamic before reaching a unnecessary epiphanic conclusion. The second half of the movie lacks direction and appears to be unsure of its message – but Connelly’s performance is consistently captivating as the fiery, sharp-tongued older woman who could explode at any moment.
Source: theguardian.com
