Tensions rise between a young couple when they invite an attractive
filmmaker to stay at their lakeside cabin.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Lawrence Michael Levine
Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Christopher Abbott, Sarah Gadon, Paola Lázaro, Grantham
Coleman
Writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine's
Black Bear is three movies rolled into one. It's a "people
go crazy in a cabin" movie. It's a "shifting persona" movie. It's a
backstage farce. As a "people go crazy in a cabin" movie it's thoroughly
engaging, thanks to the performances of its three leads. As a backstage
farce it's amusing while adding little to that particular canon. It's as
a "shifting persona" movie that Black Bear feels most
redundant, chiefly because in treading this territory Levine finds
himself competing with some of cinema's most iconic filmmakers, and
predictably comes up short.
The setting is one of those fabulous lake houses where characters are
always getting into trouble in American psychological thrillers.
Struggling musician Gabe (Christopher Abbott) inherited the house
from his mother, and has made it his home with his pregnant partner
Blair (Sarah Gadon). To bring in some money they've decided to
rent out a spare room for any artists who might like to take a retreat
in a scenic location.
Taking them up on such an offer is Allison (Aubrey Plaza), a
filmmaker/actress contending with a case of writer's block. She's
instantly flirtatious with Gabe, who is awkward in her presence. When
Allison and Blair meet, you can peel the passive aggression with a
pocket knife. That night, the wine flows and joints are rolled, and with
our three protagonists' guards down, things are said which cause upset
and tension. Blair's paranoia about the pretty young woman she's let
into her home comes bubbling to the surface in hysterical fashion, only
serving to push Gabe into Allison's arms.
As a one-act play about three attractive young people thrown together
in a cabin and lubricated with alcohol, Black Bear's opening act makes for a thrilling watch. All three actors are at the
peak of their powers, and the movie gives them room to express
themselves without coming off as self-indulgent.
The same can't be said for the remainder of the film. Following an
incident that closes out the opening act, we return to the shot that
opened the movie, that of Allison sitting at the end of the lake's pier
in a red swimsuit. The difference this time is that the shot is
handheld, rather than the locked down composition we were previously
offered. As the camera follows Allison we discover that she's on a film
set. It's not however one of her own movies, but rather it's directed by
Gabe, who is also now her lover. In this scenario Blair is another
actress who has conspired with Gabe to gaslight Allison into believing
she's having an affair with the director in order to mine a more
realistic performance from Allison. Needless to say, this leads to much
chaos on set when a paranoid Allison turns to the bottle.
After settling into an intensely gripping character drama, we're left
to watch a rather run of the mill behind the scenes farce. While anyone
who has ever worked on a film set in any capacity will chortle at some
of the in-jokes, there's nothing here we haven't seen in the multitude
of movies that have covered this topic, from
The Bad and the Beautiful to Day for Night. Most of all it feels like a millennial take on Tom de Cillo's satire
of '90s indie filmmaking, Living in Oblivion. It's very well performed, with a standout turn from
Paola Lázaro as an assistant director contending with the stress
of the situation while nursing an upset stomach, but also very run of
the mill.
What are we to make of the switching roles between our three leads? Is
this second portion meant to represent reality, or a fiction of
Allison's making? Or perhaps it's the other way around and the opening
act was the reality which has inspired this fiction? It's difficult to
care, as Levine doesn't offer us so much as a crumb of information to
draw a connection between the two. If you bring shifting personas into
your drama, you better have something interesting to say, as you're now
in cinematic territory that has been mined by such greats as Hitchcock,
Bergman, Altman and Lynch. Levine does nothing of note with this
concept, and while it grabs our attention with its initial bait and
switch, we soon lose interest in the psychology of this tactic, as there
doesn't seem to be a whole lot of thought behind it. Even the notion of
integrating this template into a backstage drama isn't particularly
revolutionary, as Monte Hellman did the exact same thing with his
under-seen 2010 oddity Road to Nowhere.
If Black Bear is worthy of a watch it's solely for that
great opening act, and particularly for the performance of Plaza, cast
against type as a very millennial hipster breed of femme fatale. It was
shot long before COVID interrupted filmmaking practises, but with its
confined setting and improv vibe, it resembles the new breed of lockdown
shot dramas that have emerged over the past year.
