Catherine (Elisabeth Moss, “Mad Men”) put her aspirations on hold to manage the affairs of her famous artist father. Virginia (Katherine Waterston, “Inherent Vice”) is a trust-fund baby spending her days on perpetual vacation. They are not what you would call likable.
These best friends are privileged women who slip into defensive posture whenever they feel the glare of judgment upon them, which is often. They are ostensibly there for each other, yet so self-involved they can barely break out of their own little bubbles. Neither writer/director Alex Ross Perry nor his actresses attempt to soften these characters. Yet, surprisingly, we actually come to care for them — or at the very least worry about them.
Catherine is a mess from the opening, her face smeared in tears and snot as she cries and yells and berates a cheating boyfriend who calmly bails on her while she’s mourning the loss of her father. This torrent of contradictory emotions — anger, betrayal, love, hate, don’t leave me and get the hell out — is painful and funny and relatable. The narcissism comes later, as she commiserates with Virginia in an upscale cabin getaway out of the city.
What should be a weekend of bestie comfort twists into a contemporary passive-aggressive take on the traditional Hollywood melodrama. These catty frenemies vie in close quarters, but without the showboating spectacle of divas in high dudgeon. Flashbacks of a previous visit — with Catherine so wrapped up with her boyfriend she never notices her best friend’s emotional turmoil — mirror the verbal sparring and petty sniping here.
Confessions become opportunities to swipe at each other. The intrusion of Virginia’s neighbor and friend-with-benefits (Patrick Fugit, hiding his spite behind a boyish smile) is just something else to resent.
Perry kept his distance in “Listen Up Philip,” offering the omniscient commentary of a wry author à la Philip Roth, but he’s up close and uncomfortably personal here. A wilting, untouched salad on Catherine’s bedside table references both the lethargy of depression and a vegan twist on Polanski’s “Repulsion”?; Moss is truly scary as she slips into dazed smiles and giggling fits.
It may sound unpleasant to watch, and there are moments of discomfort, but Perry and his performers draw you into this raw chamber piece. You can’t look away, and neither can you dismiss the emotional wreckage of friends who fail each other so spectacularly.
“Queen of Earth”
Rating: Not rated
Showing: Sundance Cinemas Seattle
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