Queen of Earth

To me, this was one of those supposed deep dramas that produced only unlikable characters, espousing psychological drivel throughout, and thus in the end just became ponderous and irritating to watch. Often told through flashbacks, it held my interest for a while, wondering where it was all going. I should have known better because it ended up going nowhere, all the way to its highly ambiguous finale.

Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterston star as Catherine and Virginia respectively. Catherine has come up to her best friend Virginia's family vacation home to get some rest and relaxation. Her emotional state is quite unstable, after her father, a renowned artist committed suicide, and her partner has told her he's having an affair with another woman.

If these two women are best friends, I wouldn't like to meet their enemies, because Catherine and Virginia are constantly bickering at their best moments and being cruel and hostile to each other at their worst. They're joined from time to time by Virginia's neighbor Rich (Patrick Fugit), who's in a relationship of some sorts with Virginia, and who seems to delight in "adding fuel to the fire" whenever he can to provoke the unstable Catherine.

All in all, I imagine the writer and director here Alex Ross Perry, was aiming for a deep meaningful film, but all I found it to be was a tedious and irritating waste of time.

I went into Queen of the Earth with so much good will. The premise sounds like it has a great deal of potential - a woman's (Elizabeth Moss) father dies and she goes to try and get away from everything in the wake of this and breaking up with her boyfriend to a cabin by a lake that her best friend (Katharine Waterston) has, and from there she starts to lose her mind. I hadn't seen The Color Wheel or Listen up Phillip, the previous Alex Ross Perry films, but I am an admirer of Elizabeth Moss (just last year she was in a little seen but awesome indie movie, The One I Love), and I thought she could pull off a deep and interesting character. The trouble is, the resulting film Queen of the Earth isn't deep or interesting, though it would very much like to be and pretends to be.

It paigns me to rag on a film that is trying to be ambitious in the psychological/interior sense. It's not that the world lacks independent film dramas dealing with loss and mental instability, but it's always good to have well made ones that let the audience in to the character's pain and, perhaps, see that person grow. But the core problem with the movie is that it doesn't give enough context for the main character's misery. In a sense the format reminded me of Lars von Trier's Antichrist, only without the hilarious fox or over-the-top antics involving castration: someone loses a loved one, they go off to the middle of the woods with a close friend, and then the bile spews out. And Queen of the Earth is nothing but an experience where characters are loaded with bile to one another scene after scene.

Of course a story dealing with grief and loss and mental fractions should be taking itself seriously, of course... but maybe it should also allow a tone that doesn't hit the same ugly sensations. Even in the flashbacks Moss and Waterston's characters are sniping at one another in passive-aggressive or just aggressive ways, and even the (very) few semi-happy moments are tinged with the flavor of dread. After an opening shot where we see Moss crying and in hysterics - and to be fair, it's an amazingly acted and shot scene - it never really loses that tone, and yet we also never get a sense of WHERE and WHO this character was at before all of this; it's all told to us (that she had a father who was reviled, that she is reviled as a "spoiled brat", that she should get over herself, her art, etc).

Part of the approach may be due to the low-budget - Perry didn't quite get started with the 'mumblecore' filmmakers, but he's in the same ballpark - and yet there's little actual creativity, or any sense of empathy that the audience can have in the writing, at least from my perspective. Part of the problem too is due to the style, where Perry gets composer Keegan DeWitt to hit the same ominous, horror-movie notes, and it's draining. In scene after scene it's as though we are locked in with one woman, Catherine, who is a head-case and is becoming undone further and further along (the same tone is basically, 'why can't they leave me alone') and she is not that interesting as a miserable character, and Virginia is even worse. There's no arc with either of these people, no sense of growth whether it's up or down (well, I guess Catherine DOES get worse, but you know what I mean, the trajectory is muddled and shallow); that may be part of the point, but it doesn't work in this case.

I can see why the film was made, to bring a full atmospheric experience through eerie-grainy 16mm cinematography, and to highlight how, well I guess, society people are people too. But aside from Moss's performance, as she really is trying and going for this full- throttle (she produced too), Queen of the Earth comes off as a miserable, empty time.

Greetings again from the darkness. Friendship doesn't just happen. It requires constant maintenance along with give and take from both sides. When a long time friendship between Catherine and Virginia devolves into a passive-aggressive game of emotional "tag, you're it", the result is an unusual psychological expose' on self-indulgence and grieving.

Writer/director Alex Ross Perry follows up his critically acclaimed LISTEN UP PHILIP with a glimpse into the complexities of friendship between two women who seem mostly clueless to both their world of privilege, and their not-so-subtle narcissism. Both Catherine and Virginia have experienced personal tragedies at different times, and their friendship has basically crumbled due to the responses of each woman towards the other.

A startling opening scene serves up a very emotional Elisabeth Moss (Catherine) as she and her boyfriend (Kentucker Audley) argue their way through an ugly break-up due to his infidelity on the heels of the suicide of Catherine's dad and mentor. The rest of the movie covers the week (each day marked by a scripted placard) that Catherine spends with her best friend at Virginia's (Katherine Waterston, Sam's daughter) family lake house. Flashbacks cover the previous year's visit under much different circumstances, but it's the intimate … and often quite uncomfortable … moments between the two women that provides the crux of the film.

Director Perry focuses a great deal of attention on the faces of Catherine and Virginia – many of these are extreme close-ups that leave thoughts unspoken, yet quite clear to the viewer. There are elements of 1970's schlock horror films … but not in a bad way. The music, atmosphere and camera angles have a certain retro feel, but the tension between the two friends is palpable and timeless.

Perry's script and the performances of Moss and Waterston tap into that nasty bit of human nature that makes us believe our problems are much worse than anyone else's. Building on that, the animosity felt when our friends aren't "there for us" in times of trauma, can lead to a dangerous slope that affects judgment and mental stability. Watching Catherine and Virginia go at it has elements of truth and dread.

Patrick Fugit appears in a few scenes as Virginia's neighbor, and his sole purpose seems to be to torment Catherine – at least that's how she sees it. The juxtaposition of the two visits (separated by one year) makes for some very interesting character observations, and helps us understand the delusions and bitterness. It's an interesting and stylish little film that doesn't so much entertain as spur introspection.

I loved "Listen Up Philip" and found "The Color Wheel" very interesting (if also annoying), so I was very psyched for this latest by ARP. I'm not sure what it ultimately adds up to, script-wise, or how much weight it would have at all if not for the lead performance. But what a performance. Moss is remarkable. It's one of those descent-into-madness performances that's so riveting it almost doesn't matter that the narrative and explicating psychology are sketchy at best. I suppose that's partly the point--that our understanding of what is happening to the character is as fragmentary as her own understanding of it--but nonetheless it's a little frustrating. That doesn't matter all that much, though, because Moss is so fascinating to watch. Eventually I'll see the movie again, not only to experience that performance a second time, but also to see if the film has more substance to it (independent on that star turn) than it appeared at first glance.

So, I really wasn't a fan of Alex Ross Perry's last film Listen Up Philip. That's all I have to base him on. I felt there were a few redeeming aspects going for it, but generally it was an unpleasant experience. It's biggest redeeming aspect? Easily Elisabeth Moss. She played Philip's recovering ex-girlfriend with such tender vulnerability that Perry's ineptitude as a writer and director couldn't get in her way. She makes the film worthwhile when the film could have easily chopped off her subplot and remained the same. Though to clarify, her performance is good, her story is a drag. In theory, Queen of Earth was the perfect next move. A focused movie letting Moss let loose with the unhinged side of her character from Listen Up. And yet, it went so wrong. Someone must have hurt Alex Ross Perry bad. The only thing he has to thoughtlessly spray about people are mean-spirited bites with absolutely no finesse. I don't mind cynical films or characters, but not when they bring absolutely nothing insightful to the table. It's an ugly spite that dives into the unpleasant side of unpleasant people without essential epiphanies.

Instead, Perry has his 'queen of earth' blame everyone else for her problem sans any hint of irony. It's far too self-serious and unsatisfying. It's lazy writing when the backstory is much more interesting than what they're showing on screen, especially when its many flashbacks refuse to divulge into it. It's not necessarily a clumsy film, but it's a very pretentious in its composition and rhythm as if it's the next Persona or 3 Women. How many minuscule scenes do we need of the two leading women walking by each other tensely in a room? I'd like to say Katherine Waterston saves it in a co-leading opportunity, but in Perry's hands she's worse than Moss. I forgive both actresses and Patrick Fugit, but the material they had to work with is so petty and flat, never probing into deeper human needs, only superficial selfish desires that have no third dimension. I could kind of get into it at first, the opening prologue shot for example is very compelling, but it just never finds its way from there. At least its photography isn't quite as incompetent, though Perry is trapping me in his closeups again. It makes Listen Up Philip look well developed in comparison.

5/10