“The acting saves this from being a Razzie Award winner but it’s the limp script and direction which let this down“
Con Nats
2 ponytails
The highly anticipated erotic thriller starring Kirsten Stewart and Ed Harris was apparently a hit at Sundance.
Jackie (Katy O’Brian) rides into town like a dark angel and on night #1 has an in erotic encounter with Jay-Jay (Dave Franco) to get a job at a shooting range run by Lou Senior, a balding Ed Harris with an awful ponytail wig (which is somehow worse than Franco’s mullet). Jackie then meets Louise (Kristen Stewart) at the gym she runs. She’s an angry loner, bitter at her family, particularly her father, Lou Snr (possibly due to his bad haircut).
Lou falls hard for Jackie. Within minutes of meeting her she’s giving her a place to stay, erotic encounter #2 and all the steroids she wants to help Jackie with her dream of winning a body builder’s competition in Vegas.
Things turn nasty after a dinner they have with Lou’s sister, Beth (Jena Malone) the down trodden wife of Jay-Jay but this lust triangle isn’t really a sub-plot; it’s a trigger for Beth to end up in a coma after Jay-Jay beats her, and a revenge takes place that upsets their lives, and Jay-Jay’s dental work.
It seems Stewart is a darling of the young, and the LGBTQI crowd due to her Twilight years, and this film is already attracting plaudits from Stewart fans. I doubt any are from hardened movie goers.
For me, there’s more chemistry between nitro and glycerine than the two leads and some of the sex scenes aroused laughs. Ed Harris does act but not as well as his ponytail. (I don’t know why these old legends agree to these Colonel Kurtz type roles. Marlon has set a benchmark no ponytail can hurdle.) Jay-Jay and Beth are no more than caricatures and the leads are highly unlikeable.
Worst performance must go to Rose Glass for her writing (with Weronika Tofilska) and poor direction. I understand that steroids have an effect of quickly increased strength and muscle. What I didn’t realise was I watching a Hulk movie. This script went from drama to melodrama to superhero film in 104 minutes and none of them are convincing. And to use vomit as your recurring motif is dangerous when your film is at risk of producing the same effect.
The acting saves this from being a Razzie Award winner but it’s the limp script and direction which let this down. It doesn’t know what it wants to be, other than a Kristen Stewart showcase. She’s a good actress but not good enough to carry this into empathy and believability.
I’m not in the demographics for this film so it might have affected my judgement but there were more laughs than gasps from the audience. Either way, I’ll be watching the career of Ed’s ponytail with interest. It had the most talent on screen.
Con Nats, On The Screen
