Queen of Earth

Queen of Earth is a character study of a depressed woman who unravels following death, scandal, and a break-up. She spends a week at a high end lake side house belonging to a friend.

The visit, which should have been a calm, nurturing respite from her personal tragedies turns into a gut wrenching week. Her friend lacks the patience and empathy to help her heal. Instead she pushes her further into depression and decompensation.

Elizabeth Moss is brilliant with this long, slow disintegration. I could compare her performance to Elizabeth Taylor in 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' or Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf.

Katherine Waterston, daughter of the beloved Law and Order actor San Waterston, plays a hard edged, unkind, and self centered rich girl. She is unable to help her friend with debilitating depression. In fact she worsens the situation with her criticism, and harsh comments. She is a slender brunette with Ali McGraw looks. Look for more good work from this actress.

The movie moves slow as a glacier. The visual elements are very simple. The lovely house, the lake, and the faces of the two actresses are the main elements. Extremely important is the music.

The musical score establishes the mood, the dread, the tension, the intense unease which characterizes this film. A woman walking down a flight of steps turns into a tense and anxious scene because of the musical score. Another writer/director would have used a voice over to communicate with the audience. Director Alex Ross Perry uses music.

I believe this is only the 4th film by Alex Perry. I think it is a very ambitious undertaking. It is similar in pace and mood to the Lars von Trier film Melancholia. I look forward to more films from Alex Ross Perry.

This is not for every one. It is a very slow and unhappy movie. The characters are not likable. The men are horrid. It is a study of two women and a friendship which is no longer viable. It is a study of a woman who loses her grip on reality and has no one to help her. It is an excellent film with a brilliant performance worthy of an Oscar by Elizabeth Moss.

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 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.

Alex Ross Perry's "Queen of Earth" is a very demanding psychological drama. It has indie feature written all over it, and looking at the reviews and ratings, it comes as no surprise to see that so many people were turned off by its slow-moving nature and the almost tedious length of its dialogues. On the surface, it could easily look like "Queen of Earth" consists of talking, long gazing and nothing else. But underneath its exterior, the film offers a thoughtful and deep exploration of the motivations and thoughts behind its main character, played superbly and memorably by Elisabeth Moss, and utilizes its obvious Bergman-esque influences to create a unique, mystifying and entrancing atmosphere. By the half point, I was entranced, at the end, I was almost sad to leave these characters behind. "Queen of Earth" is a highly unusual film in that there isn't much of a plot, but it still has a lot to say. It's definitely worth watching, but only for those who enter the experience with an open mind and are not easily turned off by the arguments I described above. Also, if you're a fan of Elisabeth Moss's work, then just watch it for her incredible performance which I personally cannot believe got completely left out of any awards conversations whatsoever.

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