Review: Limited Run
Queen of Earth | Alex Ross Perry | USA | 2015 | 90 minutes
Sundance Cinemas Screening Room engagement begins Friday, September 11»
Alex Ross Perry’s captivating Queen of Earth evaluates the self-destructive loops that permeate relationships. Elizabeth Moss delivers another riveting performance as she captures that moment when her character, Catherine, loses complete control.
Queen of Earth begins with Catherine’s face contorted into a mask of pain. Her mascara running and her nose bright red almost reminiscent of a clown, she is in the throes of a breakup with her boyfriend, James (Kentucker Audley. We don’t see her boyfriend. We can only hear his voice as he explains to her that he has been seeing another woman. The timing cannot be worse as it turns out Catherine’s well renown artist father has committed suicide. It’s hard to imagine not being able to feel sympathy for a woman who has recently had one tragedy after another heaped upon her. Then you realize you are watching an Alex Ross Perry film and that no one is blameless in any of his works. What follows is an emotional snuff film that will leave you clinging to whatever sanity you have left.
Moss gives us an unflinching, raw, and personal look at what untreated mental illness can look like. We are transfixed by her slow descent in to madness. Her facial expressions and the slight squeak of her voice when she desperately tries to shield others from knowing the depth of her pain are absolutely enthralling. The naturalistic style in which she portrays this character along with the scenic environment around the main lake house setting give the movie a more realistic and more frightening tone. In one encounter she feels attacked and lashes out in all but a whisper, which impacts you as vividly as any gory scene in a horror film.
With echoes of Woody Allen’s Interiors and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Perry has crafted a scathing view of destructive female relationships all his own. Catherine and Virginia (an impeccably cast Katherine Waterston) are best friends who make make an annual pilgrimage to Virginia’s family’s lake house in upstate New York. Events are presented achronologically, so we see events of the prior year’s visit interspersed with the present week long trip. This year’s getaway is no different except for the fact that Catherine has gone through a break up just like Virginia did the previous year, and Catherine is grieving the suicide of her father.
We see rather quickly that this movie is not about the women supporting each other thorough their hardships but rather using intimate knowledge to tear each other apart. Virginia wears black and Catherine wears white or lighter clothing to add further contrast between the two. Virginia gives as good as she gets and plays the ultimate ice queen as she tells Catherine that she would rather cut people out of her life completely rather than have them drag her down or ruin her sense of well-being. Catherine tells her that’s an immature outlook to take. We witness a friendship coming to an end, and the women have nothing left for each other but to fling horribly vituperative insults.
Queen of Earth might not be intended for a wide audience. None of the characters in this film are likable. Its claustrophobic focus on two hyper-literate, privileged young white women and their horrible boyfriends might actually be off putting for some people. Catherine and her friends might remind viewers of the over-privileged, pompous individuals who are way too convinced of their own self-importance in Perry’s last feature Listen Up, Philip. What makes this drama compelling is what lies beneath the surface of this privilege and acerbic exchange.
When Virginia offers Catherine a salad, Catherine clearly takes it as an insult as she is seeing things through a tainted lens. Everything is a perceived slight on her part. Later, when Virginia returns from a midday run to see Catherine snacking on junk food, the piercing look she gives her seems to be an indictment of the entire relationship up to that point. The cringe inducing glances and dialogue never lets up and the tension sits with you for the duration of the movie. There’s no empathy on display and I found myself bristling at the thought that someone’s best friend could be that icy after the loss of a friend’s father. This is relational aggression on full tilt and I found myself frightened and mesmerized all at once.
Regardless of how one feels about the demographics of the film’s characters, with the film’s razor-sharp dialogue, cinematography, and editing, Alex Ross Perry has given us a blueprint for what American independent filmmaking should be. The pacing and tension that Perry builds is palpable. Keegan DeWitt wrote the score, which consists of a 70s-era Carpenter/Craven style sense of dread that leads you to believe you are getting ready to watch a slasher film. The movie is a drama but it has horrific elements in it as you witness the brutality with which the characters level emotional assaults at one another. Both of these women, in their own way, are monsters. Words are like daggers in this film and Perry has armed each of his characters to the teeth.
After watching the film, it is hard to see why these women were friends in the first place as Perry shows few scenes of happier times for the pair, but that really isn’t the crux of the film from his point of view. Virginia tells Catherine in one scene “You can get out of someone else’s cycle, but you can’t get out of your own.” The friendship may not survive but each of these women have their own demons to conquer.
In addition to opening at Sundance Cinemas on Friday, September 11, Queen of Earth is also available for rental and purchase at several streaming services. Go to GoWatchIt for details.