I can't imagine I'll be more aggravated by another performance this year than I was by Andrea Riseborough's in this movie.
I'll never complain about a movie trying to give us something we haven't seen before, so credit where credit is due. But this film is a misfire from top to bottom. Set in a hyper-artificial world that reads like a love child between John Waters and David Lynch, the film is full of anger, frustration, and sadness about being forced into social norms that don't fit. I like the concept on paper, but this movie is intolerable. Nobody felt like a real character, nothing happening felt like it had any urgency, everything felt exaggerated and arbitrary. Riseborough is the worst offender -- why deliver a line like a normal human being when you can instead grimace and mug and throw yourself on the floor for no conceivable reason. But nobody comes out of this movie unscathed. The only scenes that featured characters having actual conversations of any substance sounded like gender identity podcasts.
It was like this movie was trying from the outset to be a cult classic, not understanding that cult classics can't be manufactured. I very much disliked it.
Grade: D.
