Berlin: Rebecca Miller’s newest romantic provocation is one other subversive, star-studded spin on what movie-ready love seems to be like.
Rebecca Miller makes romances. And comedies. And dramas. With character research nonetheless beholden to loopy plots, she’s lined all the things from drug dependancy to infidelity, incest to ambition. A Rebecca Miller movie means releasing expectations, eschewing shiny photos and tidy plots, and embracing the mess inherent in life itself. Her movies are wild, dreamy, unhappy, humorous — and in no way real looking.
That’s definitely the case with “She Got here to Me,” which follows a loosely linked group of individuals all made completely loopy by love. Miller delights in toying with what feels like a cutesy idea, stretching it to wacky (and infrequently great) ends. It could be most intently aligned together with her earlier movie, the 2015 “Maggie’s Plan” (it additionally poked on the concept of recent romance), however it shares a number of the issues she mined in her debut “Angela” and its perception that faith gives some form of purity for individuals who actually dedicate themselves to it.
Steven (Peter Dinklage) is a lauded composer who famously went bonkers after his final opera bombed 5 years in the past, sending him right into a deep (“deep“) melancholy ultimately damaged by a romance along with his then-therapist, now spouse Patricia (Anne Hathaway). Steven, whose newest present is due in two weeks, doesn’t actually like being social: We meet him huffing and puffing by way of a cocktail celebration, which he exits by trying to cover behind a big potted plant, a main place for him to verify his skyrocketing coronary heart charge.
Steven and the delightfully uptight Patricia have their very own issues, however Hathaway turns her supporting position right into a meal. She faucets into Patricia’s rigidity so deeply that her eventual spin into one thing very completely different feels all of the extra intelligent “She Got here to Me” usually features as an ensemble piece that largely orbits round Steven, however each time Hathaway’s brutally type-A Patricia seems (it is a girl who has a particular lab coat for cleansing), she brings sudden verve to the movie. She’s maybe the one performer right here who is aware of precisely what her nutty character is doing, and even what she is able to.
Elsewhere, love is flourishing. Patricia’s son Julian (Evan Ellison) and his girlfriend Tereza (Harlow Jane) are within the throes of old flame: good sufficient to bear in mind that issues may change between them, younger sufficient to hope they don’t. Tereza’s maniacal stepdad Trey (an against-type Brian D’Arcy James) and her cynical mom Magdalena (a heartbreaking Joanna Kulig) don’t assist issues. (Different methods by which these disparate love tales mix are one of many movie’s deepest pleasures, and received’t be spoiled right here.)
When Steven’s author’s block kicks into overdrive, Patricia (whom he nonetheless calls “Doc”) all however tosses him out of the home in hopes he may “get misplaced” and discover one thing helpful alongside the way in which. Quickly, Steven and his devoted pup Levi are wandering throughout Brooklyn earlier than they stumble into an area dive bar in the course of the morning. They usually’re not alone. Right here he finds the inspiration for “She Got here To Me” (additionally the identify of his personal nutty opera): Katrina (Marisa Tomei), an enthralling tugboat captain (you learn that accurately) who awkwardly sweeps Steven off his toes for a tugboat-set dalliance.
It’s sufficient to interrupt Steven’s author’s block, that’s for rattling certain. The ensuing opera is greeted rapturously throughout the movie, however it’s additionally the story of a murderous cannibal hooked on romance who additionally lives on a tugboat. Anyway, it places him again on high. All the pieces else? Not so nice. Tereza and Julian discover themselves in authorized bother, Patricia’s love for cleansing sends her searching for the purity of God, and the actual Katrina goes full cuckoo-bananas. Love is insanity. Love makes folks mad.
Miller grounds a few of her kookier particulars within the trappings of a typical NYC romance: sunlit streets, dreamy brownstones, interconnected tales, hammy declarations of devotion, miscommunications, and (in fact) journeys to the opera. The environment are acquainted, however Miller needs to make use of these tropes to interrogate what romance really means, the true worth of affection, and the way following your bliss may land you within the nuthouse.
It’s humorous and unusual and typically really darkish. Not all of it really works and even coheres, however it additionally gives a contemporary have a look at what love does to folks, each on the massive display and out on this planet. Nobody makes movies fairly like Miller; we simply want she would come to our screens extra usually.
Grade: B
“She Got here to Me” premiered on the 2023 Berlin Worldwide Movie Competition. It’s at the moment looking for distribution.
