Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Gaby Dellal
Starring: Fiona Shaw, Katherine Waterston, Chaske Spencer, Phylicia Rashad, Didi Conn, Timothy Hutton
Park Avenue (director Gaby Dellal, scripting duties shared with Tina Alexis Allen) opens within the boundless vistas of North America (an irl panoramic blend of Montana and Saskatchewan prairies) before sweeping toward the homespun rituals of ranch life: cows, gates, and protagonist Charlotte (Katherine Waterston) presenting as absolutely amazing on a perlino steed, dressed in de rigueur white shirt, jodhpurs and a navy cravat. People either look brilliant on a horse or ridiculous, and Charlotte leaves no fodder. To emphasise her virtuosity, we see her ride in hyperbolic slow motion, cross cutting to scenes of a darkly handsome cowboy fruitlessly yelling her name into the infinite pastures with pursuant venom: he is her controlling husband and a bad bastard. A costume change (flannel shirt over white vest, tight mom jeans), a goodbye to the horse (☹) and Charlotte is off, dangling her hand out of her truck-car (not as good on vehicles as I am with clothes) in a symbolic expression of freedom as she escapes her domineering fella. It's like a Paula Cole song (a favourite) come to life, and I was all for it.
The iconography is that of the resurgent Western, stuff like that Yellowstone show which the women in my family all seem to really enjoy in its many iterations (and which is also, wittily, referenced later on). Plot wise, with its overbearing husband, aspirationally attractive/capable female lead and gorgeous surroundings, you're settling in for a romance of the Hallmark kind... But as Charlotte glides down the highways, Dellal frames a coyote tearing at some roadkill, suggesting that something darker is afoot.
We duly transition all the way to New York, and the Upper East Side, where Charlotte's aged mum Kit (God Fiona Shaw) is being given what the mise-en-scene implies is some heavy news at the doctor's. The look and tone of Park Avenue immediately transforms as we find ourselves in the oak panelled, thick draped loci of Manhattan apartments, as far as you can get from the dirt and sweat of Charlotte's Canadian ranch, and a realm of shifting emotions and social etiquettes.
As her only option to escape her nob husband, Charlotte has returned to the apartment where she grew up and where Kit still lives, surrounded by the accoutrements of her own dead spouse. The women's contradictory relationship is signalled by Kit announcing "I must be dying" upon Charlotte's unexpected arrival, a moment of mordant wit which will characterise Shaw's dry (and inevitably amazing) performance. Park Avenue seems to promise a gentle odd couple, fish out of water reconciliatory drama, and, it sort of does deliver on that implication, but at the same time not. Frustratingly, the film never quite finds its groove.
We meet Kit's picaresque cast of friends (which includes Didi fucking Conn and the ageless Phylicia Rashad! Mother, mother, mother), but if the intention is to create a colourful contrast to Charlotte's presumably down-home existence, it doesn't quite work as the characters are reduced to cameos. Dear old Timothy Hutton turns up as an aged recovering addict, seemingly only there so he can be the victim of Kit's relentlessly spiteful banter. Such raillery characterises Kit's relationship with Charlotte too, with dialogue aspiring (successfully) towards a recognisably droll New York irony (after an injection Kit quips, "I've had more pricks than I can remember," ha!). But the issue is, as Kit keeps up with the put downs, it seems like the pair just come across as hating each other for the most part. It makes you wonder just how bad this husband was: the implication is that he was controlling, but was he ripping the piss out of Charlotte every two seconds in the same cruel manner that her own mother does throughout the film?
We don't know because his presence and threat is kept to a minimum, almost forgotten. As is the grown-up daughter of Charlotte who rocks up for a couple of scenes and then disappears off screen. There is a two step forward, one step back relationship with the hotel doorman (Charlotte had a crush on him when she was a kid-!), and we see sex through a welcome female gaze: Charlotte's head thrown back in open joy, while the fortuned Anders' (Chaske Spencer) head nestles between her thighs (cunnilingus is the most cinematic sexual act, I think, firstly because the configuration of bodies looks so good and also, even without actual sexual contact, there is real life proximal intimacy). But this fling sort of goes nowhere, and is grist to Kit's attitude towards marriage, which she believes is sacred (what happened to all those pricks she was meant to have had?!). Kit's argument that Charlotte should stay with tall, dark and dickish is part of the film's narrative conflict, but it is unpersuasive on several levels: Kit is presented as a bohemian, so why is she being such a square? And also, with Charlotte and Kit being hitherto estranged, why would the former GAF what her batty mom thinks?
Kit haunts the apartment, which is a shrine to her dead husband. Her unadjusted mourning extends to her keeping a spare seat at the table when she goes out for meals, and even ordering for the vacant party. This narrative proposition, which juxtaposes Charlotte's relationship via a shared sense of absent partners, is potentially intriguing but again not explored. Is Kit's physical illness a symptom of her emotional malady or vice-versa, or is it a case that the film cannot make up its mind? Kit collects masks, and speaks about her archive at late night boho bars (imagine: going out to some smoky joint, martini in hand, to hear someone played by Fiona Shaw wang on about her esoteric art. Is one of the reasons I'm bearish about Park Avenue because it sails so close to my hopes and dreams?), and perhaps there is some sort of commentary about how we, within polite society, all wear a disguise, to fit in, to blend, to pass... But the narrative doesn't delve into this theoretically intriguing thread. Instead, Park Avenue seems to be trying on its different narrative visors for size, before dropping one for the next. During the film, a cover of the Velvet Underground's 'Sweet Jane' frequents the soundtrack. Originally a New York standard which exemplifies the counter cultural romanticism of the city, here, with beige production, glassy vocals and pensive delivery, it becomes a watered down and strangely pointless dirge.
Park Avenue is in UK/ROI cinemas from November 14th.
