independent-film

Same territory as TV Glow, a few years further on, and I think I liked it more. Gillian Anderson plays Billy big, with velvet, fur and a Southern draw. She’s great. Hannah Einbinder underplays Kris against her, which is right as two Billys would have been too much. Alex G is back for a third Schoenbrun score, which I’ve been listening to and enjoying for the past few weeks. One of the cues is called ‘Slasher Climax’, which is, well… let’s just say the central theme of this film took me longer to work out than I’d care to admit.

Three stories, each with a flicker of something that never quite holds. Jarmusch’s deadpan usually finds the warmth under the stillness; here the stillness is mostly just… still. Whatever thread runs through them (family as obligation? as performance?) is far too faint.

I don’t entirely know what I just watched. Perhaps that’s the point. It opens like a coming-of-age film about two kids bonding over a Buffy-esque TV show, then becomes something stranger. The Lynch comparisons are valid. Schoenbrun shoots suburbia soft and pink, and the Alex G score sits underneath everything like static you can’t quite tune out. The broader soundtrack, Caroline Polachek and yeule especially, is great. What stays with me is how patient the film is about not naming what it’s actually about. For anyone working through questions of identity and dysphoria, I suspect this will matter for a long time.

Excellent. Quiet, subtle, really well observed. Lovely to look at too.