Review by Grace Winburne
TIFF Day 1 started off very strong with this cacophonous depiction of chaotic motherhood. We follow Linda, a woman whose life we have the unfortunate pleasure of confronting with her, yammering away on the phone, trying to pick up food for her picky-eater daughter, we can only hear through various complaints and whines. The mother-daughter duo return home, pizza in tow, to a flooded apartment with a cavernous hole in the ceiling. Trying to singlehandedly manage a sick child, home repairs and renovations, her work as a therapist mitigating and triaging everyone else’s problems, Linda struggles to keep her head above rising water, as the girls relocate to a shabby motel by the beach.
I said she, Linda, has no support, and while this is essentially the Rose Byrne movie, there is an amazing supporting cast offering up very interesting and charming performances that serve to offset Linda’s mania, highlight her own selfishness, and foil her fatalistic tendencies. There is James. A hotel employee, played by the immediately likable A$AP Rocky, who takes a friendly interest in Linda and her daughter, offering kindness and support. Initially, Linda is unable or unwilling to accept, seemingly out of mistrust, or more certainly, out of guilt. Here is an example of the “it takes a village,” mindset. He could be her village, but why should she trust him? There is her husband, played by Christian Slater. He is a disembodied voice on the other end of the phone, living a life totally separate from the day to day struggles of his family. He seemingly only exists to brow beat his wife, asking her only what she’s doing wrong, and how hard can it really be? To offset her mania, we are treated to such a stoic and frigid portrayal of a talk therapist crafted by Conan O’Brian, who plays Linda’s Therapist. Our favorite funny ginger completely forgoes anything remotely resembling humor, and instead treats us to his more stable, and frankly icy character. Linda looks for a place to rest her head against a more understanding and comforting shoulder or lap, but her Therapist refuses her wish at every turn. He complicates or rather contradicts her more emotional outbursts with a chilling anecdote about med school experiments performed on rats. That in the end, the rats liked being experimented on, that they liked the constant state of stress and strain. Is he saying that Linda likes feeling this out of control? That trying to manage her out of control life, gives her a sense of control? Now, how is that supposed to make a woman on the absolute edge feel? Linda wants someone to tell her what to do, and clearly according to her Therapist, he can’t, that no one can.
I certainly have a soft spot for mothers. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard motherhood is, especially when it can be an isolating experience for most. It can be hard to ask for help, even harder to accept it, even when it’s freely given. Linda is trapped in this mindset, this imposed or perhaps self-imposed image of “perfect motherhood”, which means: never asking for help, never needing help, everything is your responsibility, handle it on your own, you don’t need help, you shouldn’t have to ask for hel[p, you should know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, etc. Exhausting, isn’t it? And that’s the entire runtime. It feels like if the one woman character drama of A Woman Under The Influence, was written and directed like Good Time or Uncut Gems. Which certainly isn’t a far reach, as Mary Bronstein’s husband Ronald Brontstein was a writer and producer for the latter two films. We struggle to keep up with Linda as she falls deeper and deeper into this shame spiral, swallowed whole, and spit out the other side. This film takes those feelings of guilt, blame, and shame to the extreme, culminating in such a painful ending reminiscent of Edna Pontellier’s watery end in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.