The U.S. Dramatic Competition program of the Sundance
International Film Festival has produced some of its most controversial and
acclaimed films in the last few years. In just recent memory, we’ve seen “Whiplash,”
“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Fruitvale Station,” “Upstream Color,” “Me &
Earl & the Dying Girl” and “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” among many others,
make their premiere in Sundance competition. This year, “The Birth of a Nation”
went from unknown to the highest amount ever paid for a finished film when Fox
Searchlight bought it for $17.5 million out of the Comp section. But it’s not
the only story in that section. “Southside with You,” “As You Are” and “Spa
Night” have been getting positive reviews as well. And then there’s a little
movie that some have speculated is the strangest flick to ever premiere at
Sundance.
Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (who credit themselves on
the film as “The Daniels”) premiered “Swiss
Army Man” this week to one of the most divisive responses of Sundance 2016.
The stories of walk-outs around the half-hour mark were so rampant that when the
Daniels introduced the film at a screening a few days later which I attended,
they thanked us for not walking out before the movie began. They then asked us
all to stand up and do some calisthenics to get the blood flow going. It makes
sense that a movie as gloriously strange as “Swiss Army Man” would have an
atypical intro. It’s an atypical film.
Hank (Paul Dano) has been stranded on a tiny island. He’s
about to kill himself with a long rope that he’s strung up over a cave entrance
when he sees a body (Daniel Radcliffe) has washed ashore. The body is very,
very dead, and Hank goes back to trying to kill himself when he notices
something odd. The corpse is farting. A lot. And the flatulence keeps the body
afloat in the shallow water. And so Hank jumps on and rides him like a jet ski
to another shore. And “Swiss Army Man” gets stranger from there. Hank names his
new companion Manny, and realizes that his buddy has a number of other uses
other than his gas. Can he use death to get back to life? Over the course of “Swiss
Army Man,” Hank and Manny actually become friends, and the Daniels constantly
play with expectations of fantasy, comedy and even moving drama. Hank was
arguably deader than Manny before he was stranded—too afraid to talk back to
his cruel father or speak to the girl (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) on the bus to
whom he was attracted. And Manny, driven by a phenomenal performance from
Radcliffe, actually serves as something of a naïve conscience for Hank—reminding
him what’s important in this world, including farting.
Whatever you think of the subject matter of a film that
focuses heavily on flatulence and other bodily functions, “Swiss Army Man” is a
wonderfully constructed film. The Daniels constantly play with fantasy and
reality. Is Manny really a corpse come to life? Or is Hank just crazy? Is this
fantasy or reality? The answer is yes to both. The Daniels don’t just merge the
line between what’s “really happening” and what’s in Hank’s head, they don’t
even acknowledge its existence. And Dano and Radcliffe sell the emotional
reality of the insanity, resulting in a beautiful movie about farts. It helps
that Larkin Seiple’s cinematography and Matthew Hannam’s editing are among the
best at this year’s fest, and that the fantastic music by Manchester Orchestra
not only propels the action but is incorporated into the storytelling. The
result is a film that plays like a dream, unfolding like nothing else at this
year’s Sundance.
What’s disappointing about “Equity,” another U.S. Dramatic Competition title, is the opposite
response: it feels too familiar given the potential of its premise. Meera Menon’s film, already picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, seeks to explore the alpha
male universe of high finance from a female perspective, with strong female
characters in a world that often has none at all. That’s a great idea, but it’s
just a starting point and Menon doesn’t go far enough with it nor does she
create an interesting narrative to hold it up. The characters in “Equity” aren’t
well-rounded enough for us to care what happens to them and the plot of the film
feels like a solid starting point for an AMC drama but not enough to carry a
feature.
Naomi Bishop (Anna Gunn of “Breaking Bad”) is a high-powered
senior investment banker at Remson Capital. As the film opens, she’s bungled
the IPO of a major company, losing her clients some money, so she’s feeling the
pressure when the next big fish gets on the hook: the impending IPO of a
privacy/social-media company called Cachet. Naomi feels like her superior (Lee
Tergesen) is overlooking all the other good work she’s done and senses that her
junior Erin (Sarah Megan Thomas) could be itching to take her place. Meanwhile,
Naomi reconnects with an old friend (Alysia Reiner) who happens to be working
for the SEC now and could be a legal threat. Naomi also happens to be sleeping
with a banker named Michael (James Purefoy) and if she says the wrong thing at
the wrong time it could be considered insider trading.
“Equity” has too many plot threads to concern itself with
character, which means that everyone becomes a part of the machine instead of
registering as believable. 90% of the dialogue in “Equity” is about the
impending IPO, investigation, etc. The stuff that really registers—like Erin’s
concern about what her pregnancy will do to her career—is discarded quickly as
Menon jumps back to the Cachet narrative, about which I simply never cared.
Reiner steals the film because she conveys an interesting balance of both
admiration for Naomi and a desire to use her to stop insider trading, and I
longed for a scene in which other characters felt like they existed outside of
the purpose of the paper-thin narrative.
So Yong Kim’s “Lovesong”
is a little more successful overall but also suffers from a lack of depth
around its well-defined lead. Future star Riley Keough almost justifies a
recommendation. She’s that good here, but the rest of the cast and Kim’s overly
subdued script have too little idea what to do with Keough’s talent. The result
is a film that dissipates in memory too quickly to stand out in a crowded
festival.
Keough plays Sarah, a young mother with a marriage strained
by the fact that her husband is away all the time for work. Sarah is lonely and
stressed when her best friend Mindy (Jena Malone) comes to visit. They take a
road trip, have some great conversations, and, well, one thing leads to
another. Sarah and Mindy’s increased intimacy scares them both, and Mindy
essentially runs away. Years later, Mindy is getting married and Sarah sees her
again for the first time at her wedding.
Keough grounds Sarah perfectly. In the first half of the
film, she conveys the striking loneliness of a young woman forced to be a single
parent by a workaholic spouse. She really reaches out to Mindy for help, and
emotional support. In the second half, Keough captures the confusion Sarah
feels over her reaction to Mindy getting married. She wants her friend to be
happy but she’s not convinced this is the way for her to find that happiness.
Sadly, everything outside of Keough’s performance in “Lovesong” is frustrating.
Malone’s performance is flat, in no way matching Keough’s, and the filmmaking
is far too languid, trying to add importance to the storytelling through
purposefully slow, awkward conversations that puncture the realism that the
piece needed. While I’ll remember Keough’s performance, the rest of the film is
too muted to register. In a U.S. Narrative Competition slate of 16 films, that’s
the worst thing a movie can be: forgettable.
