Ingrid Goes West is the darkest comedy I've seen in a long time. Naturally, I loved it!
Ingrid Thorburn is a product of our culture. Can we call her mentally unstable? Legally, sure, as she's seen to stalk people via Instagram. Well, one person, initially, named Charlotte. Charlotte has a large following, and apparently once commented on one of Ingrid's posts. Ingrid took that as a declaration of intimate friendship, which climaxed in violence when Charlotte did not invite Ingrid to her wedding. After showing up and macing her in the face, Charlotte is sent to a mental hospital. Even there, she has access to her phone and magazines, and soon learns about Taylor, another social media "influencer" (celebrity is far too strong a word) who lives in sunny California. Thanks to the unexpected death of her mother (yes, it's a shady, shady world) and a sudden inheritance, Ingrid packs up and indeed goes west.
Aubrey Plaza plays Ingrid with lots of gumption, not shying away from the chilling stalking episodes but imbuing honesty and compassion into a character we would say is a freak, a weirdo. She's the definition of a creep, but Ingrid is also all of us. Plaza gets us to root for her from the get-go, even as we watch her cross line after line in the sand. She's a nearly perfect antihero, and she owns every second. And why shouldn't she? We get her. Everyone who uses social media is a kind of stalker, or someone who encourages stalking, right? Which is worse? Can we blame people for getting so invested in the lives of others, when they're splashed on screens we carry in our pockets? When all they post is the sweet, sexy, lovable images of their seemingly perfect lives? How can we defend the Instagram/Facebook/Snapchat media when, by definition, it invites envy and greed and discontentment into our lives?
This film doesn't answer that, but it certainly provokes those thoughts. It's a hilarious film, bubbling over with whip-smart comedy that strikes smack in the middle of young adult culture. It's also deeply disturbing, and more than once I expected it to take a horrific turn. Taylor (played to perfection by Elizabeth Olsen) is the sweet icon of grace, and her innocence begs for disaster to approach. Not unlike Cate Blanchett's character in Notes on a Scandal, she allows the unbecoming predator into her intimacy, disregarding all the warning signs, and is subsequently forced to enact extreme damage control. Her savior -- in the form of a magnificently pseudo-naked Billy Magnussen -- keeps his eye on Ingrid, though even that isn't quite enough to spare her humiliation and some fear.
Writer-director Matt Spicer knows exactly what he's about here, and the greatest pleasure of the film is watching his total control over the proceedings. He allows the actors to play, the scenic beauty to enchant, and the humor to wax and wane naturally. He exhibits time and again his uncanny knack for pure awkwardness, an unconventional but highly effective form of cinematic humor like we saw in the sixth Harry Potter, and the pauses in dialogue when people have said or are trying not to say something are absolutely squirm-inducing. I nervously giggled my way through the entire film, because while little is laugh-out-loud funny, the whole damn thing will trigger any latent social anxieties you have.
Of course, it does drop a few guffaw-worthy gimmicks, mostly delivered by O'Shea Jackson Jr., who plays Ingrid's boyfriend née landlord Dan. An aspiring screenwriter, Dan loves Batman. In fact, he loves Batman so much, that during their unexpected but highly entertaining first sexual encounter, he has Ingrid dress up as Catwoman, call him "Batman" as he repeats it, and recite to him "Gotham needs you." That scene took the cake, though there are plenty more belly-laughs where it came from.
The ending is of particular interest to me, because I think it can be read a couple ways. After her unrequited friendship-affair blows up in her face, Ingrid confesses her loneliness and reveals her true self on an Instagram video, after which she overdoses on pills. Dan's intervention saves her, and following the attempted suicide Ingrid awakes to find herself a star. Her video has gone viral and supporters are lauding her honesty. As she scans the comments on her phone, she smiles. And that's the end. At first, I wanted to read it as her finally becoming content, expressing her pure joy that she is finally loved. And that would be a lovely sentiment, especially since the last twenty minutes or so of the movie work so hard to make her sympathetic and tragic. But I'm not convinced. The whole film before that showed her to be desperate, creepy, and downright dangerous. I think her smile is a sort of falling-off-the-wagon moment, realizing the high she has been denied her whole life. She won't rest now. If her attempted suicide got her this much attention, what will she possibly do to one-up that? It's a sly ending, one that deftly skewers the issues the film had been juggling up to that point, and one that will prompt good conversation at dinner after the screening.
IMDb: Ingrid Goes West
No comments:
Post a Comment