NZIFF 2020: The Long Walk

An old man (Yannawoutthi Chanthalungsy) finds his way back in time and tries to prevent the death of his mother, However, every time he returns to the present, he finds himself in a new present, one with its own surprises... and terrors. 

The above is a terrible plot summary, but I am willing to sacrifice it since this movie deserves to be seen with almost no knowledge.

I picked this movie without knowing that much about it, other than it was a Laotian time travel movie. And it turned out to be a wonderfully twisted surprise.

Written by Christopher Larsen and directed by Mattie Do, The Long Walk exists somewhere between time travel and a ghost story, as our protagonist seeks to fix an event in his past, while being haunted by the restless spirits of the departed.

Considering the film is set in the future, it is a joy at how effortless it is in introducing the viewer to the world. Taking the various genre components on their own, it would be so easy to see a version of this movie that was weighed down with exposition (particularly a Hollywood version). 

The story is almost entirely visual, yet without any obvious stylistic signifiers to identify the shift between past and present. The filmmakers trust that we can put together when something has changed, and I never felt confused or discombobulated - only when that is the intended effect.

Anchored by the minimalist gravitas of Chanthalungsy, the film is quiet and increasingly unsettling. I would not call it a horror movie, although there are horrifying implications and some disturbing imagery. 

The central conceit has elements which have been done before, but here it is accomplished in a quietly devastating way, that leaves almost everything up to the viewer.

The Long Walk is one of the most surprising and enjoyable experiences I have had at the movies this year. I just wish I could have been in a theatre to enjoy it.

Related

The Surrogate

The Kingmaker

Double Jeopardy (Bruce Beresford, 1999)

A woman is accused of killing her husband. After learning he faked his death, she breaks out of prison to find him and get her son back.

On her tail is a veteran parole officer who begins to question her guilt...

I have been circling a couple of ideas for mini-runs on the blog. One idea I was circling were 80s-90s thrillers. I tried to boil it down to a key theme, but I could not fixate on a set genre or series of conventions: should I look at courtroom thrillers? government conspiracy? serial killer? erotic?

One thing I noticed was how Ashley Judd’s name kept cropping up - I had forgotten how she had carved a niche for herself as a lead in mid-budget studio thrillers with high concepts.

Double Jeopardy might be the one with the longest tail, at least in terms of its central premise.

I remember the trailer for this movie coming out and people making of fun of the premise - I seem to remember a lot of conversations in the years since its release of people pointing out how poor its legal understanding is.

If this movie were better and made even half a decade earlier, then it might have been able to survive.

This movie is kind of disappointing. Maybe it is a bit early to reveal my overall thoughts, but there is no cutting it with this one.

It feels by-the-numbers from top to bottom. The execution is fairly pedestrian, with some clumsy uses of slow motion  that I could not ignore.  

Even Tommy Lee Jones's casting feels like a cliche - he is playing a role that feels like a distaff version of Sam Gerard. He is watchable but the performance feels more like a rehash than a fresh spin. His casting also felt like a fatal flaw, since it just highlights how great The Fugitive is.

It also seemed like this movie feels a few years too late. Aside from The Fugitive, it feels like a blander re-run of the kinds of man-on-the-run, domestic-bliss-gone-to-hell thrillers that were popular in the late 80s and early 90s. 

This movie is rated R, but it just comes off too clean and sanitised. This woman's whole world is turned upside down, but aside from Judd's performance, I never felt the jeopardy (har har) of her situation.

I will say, I picked this movie because Ashley Judd was in it, and I am glad she was because she was kind of the guiding star through the blandness.

Focusing on Judd, I really enjoyed her performance. She is a little too intelligent to play the young ingenue bride, but once the character has gone through her prison sentence, she really clicks.

I like angry Judd - she has a terseness and sarcastic edge that works for the character. I wish the movie was a bit smarter and complicated. Her escape from justice and tracking down of her ex husband is the most enjoyable part of the movie.

Bruce Greenwood is such a great actor, and I had totally forgotten that he was in this. There is a grizzled gravitas to him that has made him great for authority figures and presidents. Every time he speaks it sounds like he just came in off a prairie. There is a weird decency to him that should be boring, but there seems to be a self-awareness to him that makes him magnetic. 

To cut to the chase, I was looking forward to seeing that quality subverted here. He was also far younger than I had seen in other roles - I was expecting it to be more of a noir set up, with Greenwood as a homme fatal ala Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. This movie has no time for character - Greenwood does a good job here but he is a bit limited by the cookie-cutter bad guy role.

A cookie cutter thriller with some solid performances, Double Jeopardy is perfect Netflix fare. Take that whatever way you want.

Primal Fear (Gregory Hoblit, 1996)

Flashy lawyer Martin Vail (Richard Gere) is defending a young man who has been accused of killing an archbishop. When he realises that his client has a split personality, Martin has to work out a strategy that will enable him to save him from the death penalty.

I remember the poster from this movie being in my English teacher’s room. The only other thing I knew about it was that it brought Edward Norton to Hollywood’s attention. This is a long way of saying that I have had no real interest in watching this movie.

However, I have been re-visiting thrillers from the 90s and this one was on Netflix.I also really like Richard Gere as an actor, particularly when he plays morally complicated men. I have had no strong desire to watch this movie, but Gere's name drew me in.

The parts of this movie are great.

Gere plays a flashy lawyer who juggles love of the money and press with a desperate need to believe that his client is innocent. It is a contradiction that the script does not make that believable, but Gere’s slickness and faux charm makes it almost believable.

The big obstacle he faces is also intriguing: because criminal proceedings have been initiated, he cannot plead an insanity defense. This forces the character to think outside of the box, and use what he knows of the prosecuting attorney and legal grey areas to engineer a positive outcome for his client.

Looking at the cast for this movie, I was reminded of how prestigious these kinds of adult thrillers were. They were basically high-class versions of genre movies - peppered with violence and sex, but packed with big name actors and filmmakers. it is a genre that is basically dead at the multiplex.

While Norton got all the plaudits at the time, the performer who really popped for me was Laura Linney as Gere's rival, Janet Venable. She  is in her own struggle with the corrupt DA who wants to use the case for his own interests, and Linney plays that struggle so well, despite some of the gymnastics the script forces her through.

Here is where I have to clarify my own feelings on the movie as a whole, because I think Linney's character is a big part of it.

Despite the things I mentioned, I had a bit of trouble getting into this one - there is a weird flatness to the direction and the story's stakes that I could not get a finger on.

I think there is something missing from Gere's character - script-wise not in terms of performance. I never believed the contradiction of this character. There is a moral dimension to his lawyering (that's a verb) which i just could not believe.

Gere is presented as such a facile and manipulative figure for such a long portion of the runtime that the revelation that he wants to believe that people are innocent just comes off as self-serving. The film wants to present a character who has lost himself to the darkness, but has a kernel of decency that he holds onto. However, he never comes across as anything other than an ambulance chaser.

 

Ebert said this movie mistakes extra subplots for complexity and I would agree. I think the filmmakers are trying to present Gere's character as a sympathetic figure through his support of a former client who is trying to keep his restaurant - but it just feels incidental.

Tying it back to Laura Linney's character, I felt like the movie gives a stronger sense of the pressure she is under. We get repeated scenes of Janet having the corrupt states attorney (played by Frasier's dad, John Mahoney) threatening her. Her interactions with Gere's Vail also come off as one-sided. She has no power, and part of Vail's strategy is to use that against her.

In turn that nudges him away from coming off as 'complicated' to just a bad guy. Which robs the final twist of its impact.

Primal Fear is not bad. But it is a perfect example of the kind of middle-of-the-road adult thriller that they do not make any more. I would recommend it over the other 90s thriller I'm reviewing this month. There is a bit more meat on the bones here.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1954)

After a fossil of a previously unknown creature is discovered in South America, a team of archeologists journey deep into the Amazon to the mysterious Black Lagoon, hoping to find more pieces of the deceased species.

They soon realize that they are under surveillance by one of the fossil's living descendants... 

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Growing up, my mode of exercise was swimming - which is ironic because I am afraid of water. I had no problem with pools but I had an overactive imagination and with the monotony of laps, eventually my brain would start conjuring up all kinds of nastiness. It did not help that I swam in a place where it got dark fairly early and the pool was not that well-lit.

At primary school, they had a sale of old library books. I saw a book there about this movie and a friend bought it for me for a penny. It summarised the plots of all three Creature movies, with stills from the movie, and a making-off section at the back.

In this refracted way, the Creature found its way into my brain, and occasionally into that dimly lit pool I used to swim at.

While I have made my way through various kinds of horror films, I have not seen that many set underwater - I only watched Jaws for the first time about a year ago.

I have been wanting to check out more classic horror on the big screen, and I had a feeling eventually I would finally get to see the Gillman in the flesh. My local arthouse recently put on a selection of Universal’s classic Monster movies, and I booked in for Creature.

The last of Universal's classic monsters, Creature from the Black Lagoon is also an icon of the fifties trend of monster movies. It occupies an interesting place in the canon, because when it was released the characters the Creature is now associated with - Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Invisible Man - were now fodder for parody in the Abbott and Costello films.

While it is set in the fifties, and draws on some contemporary technology, the bones of the story, with the creature’s tragic pursuit of a human woman, are closer to the pathos of Karloff’s  Monster, Chaney’s Wolfman and King Kong of decades past.

As far as the technical aspects go, Creature is really eye-catching. The movie was made for 3D, but I only noticed one or two moments that overtly played to that gimmick.

The underwater photography is really stellar - I found some of the shots and editing confusing, but these sequences really elevate the picture. When the creature first pops into frame, I jumped. It is also one of the moments which probably plays great in three dimensions.

I was really impressed by how well the Gillman moved underwater. Ricou Browning played him in the underwater scenes and there is a real sense of grace to the way he moves through the water, especially in contrast to the body language of the human divers he is attacking. 

For the sequences above the water, Ben Chapman played the Creature. I am guessing it is because Browning did not have the height to tower over the other cast members. On land, the Creature is still impressive (particularly the effect of making his throat pulsate in and out like it is trying to breath) but Chapman’s movements are more stiff and slow. 

At first, I was underwhelmed. Without the added element of water, it felt like I was watching a man awkwardly trying to walk around an environment he can barely see. The limitation actually ended up benefiting the movie - it gives the Creature a sense of vulnerability. In the water he moves with grace and speed; on land, he is lumbering and clumsy.

While most of the human players are somewhat stock, Julie Adams has some spark as Kay. Up until she becomes the object of the creature's affections, when she is reduced to a damsel in distress.

During the climax, the shot of Kay in the Creature’s lair is straight out of a pulp magazine cover - a prize for the Creature and the camera.

Watching this movie after Shape of Water, I was struck by how much of that movie is just taking the subtext of Creature and putting it on-screen, from the romance with the fish man to the portrayal of gender roles and the repression of fifties Americana. I have not gone back to watch that Best Picture winner, but after watching its main inspiration, I am keen to check it out.

Overall, I really enjoyed Creature, although I did miss the eccentricity and stylization of the earlier Universal horrors. Partially it is the time period, and the relative proximity to the enforcement of the Production Code. Watching Creature, there is a blandness and lack of specificity to the characters that made the movie feel a little remote, at first.

It also feels like the ur-text for a couple of conventions that other monster and horror movies would pick up - the POV shot in the first scene; the withholding of the Creature’s face during its stalking sequences. In a way, with the cardboard characters, isolated setting and barely-glimpsed antagonist, Creature comes across as a proto-slasher. Even the story structure of having most of the action take place in a tropical isolated location, with a woman in a bikini as an object of lust/death, feels like a foreshadowing of how the genre would develop. There were plans for a remake back in the Eighties, with names like John Landis and John Carpenter onboard, which probably would have seen that influence come full circle.

Enough rambling. It is a really good movie, and no it will not be haunting me when I next visit a swimming pool (however, I am curious in knowing what it felt like to swim in the suit).

 

Director Jack Arnold is a luminary of fifties sci-fi. Aside from Creature from the Black Lagoon (and its sequel), he also made The Incredible Shrinking Man, which is meant to be great. I am sure that I will get around to those movies in the future.

The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933)

Scientist Griffin has dreams of being ranked with the greats of science. In order to achieve this goal, he has developed a solution that has rendered him invisible.

Determined to undo its effects, he has gone into exile to find a cure. What he does not realise is that one of the ingredients he used is driving him mad.

When his improvised lab is compromised by nosy village people, he declares war on the countryside.

Will the Invisible Man be cured? Or defeated?

There are some movies that deserve to be seen on the big screen. The Invisible Man is one of those movies that I have been looking forward to seeing, but I wanted to wait until I could see it on the big screen.

My local arthouse held a festival of classic Universal horror movies earlier this month, which gave me an opportunity to finally check it out.

Directed by James Whale following his work on 1931's Frankenstein, The Invisible Man is a delight.

In contrast to the gothic fairy tale of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man is more of a darkly humorous thriller, with plenty of screen time given to incidental characters (the villagers in Ipping and local bobbies) and Griffin's various escapades on his unsuspecting victims.

The filmmakers seem to recognise how cliche and dull the heroes are, and focus the action on Griffin’s rampage across the countryside. It is hard not to view the film as a farce, with scenes of Griffin befuddling a sleepy local policeman, or throwing money out into the street like an invisible Robin Hood. One of the highlights of my screening was the sequence in which a screaming woman is chased down a street by an empty pair of trousers singing nursery rhymes. My audience were roaring.

A lot of the film’s success is based on Claude Rains’ performance. Only glimpsed in the final moments, Rains’ voice is the only thing giving the viewer a sense of the character’s oscillating character, from a malicious prankster to megalomaniac. 

Released in the midst of the Great Depression, it was hard not to watch The Invisible Man through the prism of the current crisis. Griffin is motivated by hubris, but also a desire for economic advancement. He wants to be lauded as a great scientist, but his deranged talk of selling his invention for military use makes clear that he is more interested in profiting from his invention than its uses.

I did not even think about The Invisible Man of 2020, and I am struggling to think of ways to write about both of them. They just take the concept of an invisible man and spin it out into completely different works. The original is funnier and more eccentric, while the 2020 version boasts better characterisation.

One thought I had was the way the film frames Griffin’s abilities - in the original, his rampage feels like a dark power fantasy - there are lashings of horror amid the farce and black comedy, but the film balances both the threat the Invisible Man poses and the fantasy of being him. The 2020 iteration is more explicit in showing the consequences of this power fantasy.

The 1933 version of The Invisible Man is pretty short - it is basically the barest bones of the Welles story, and combined with the tone it is more of a breezy romp than the other Universal monster movies of the time (Bride is very funny, but packs more pathos in the Monster’s story).

Fast and fun, The Invisible Man is a great movie. Nothing much more to say than that.

NOIR WATCH 2020: Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang, 1945)

Shy, middle-aged Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) comes to the aid of a young woman, Kitty (Joan Bennett). Attracted to the young woman, he has a drink with her. When she deduces he is an artist, Christopher agrees.

Christopher returns home to his wife, who continues to browbeat him and compares him unfavourably to her deceased husband. 

Believing he is a rich painter Kitty and her boyfriend Johnnie (Dan Duryea) start to lean on him for money. Enraptured, Christopher steals from his job and from his wife to fund a new apartment where she lives.

It is a only matter of time before this house of cards falls in on all of them.

 

Though it features a man transfixed by a woman who draws him into crime, Scarlet Street is a great example of how conventions associated with noir are not fixed. It is a story about ordinary  people trapped by circumstance and impulse.

It is also an example of the influence of 30s French cinema on noir.The presence of Fritz Lang as the director is also notable, marking Scarlet Street as a meeting point of two of the genre’s biggest influences converging - the downbeat French dramas of the thirties and Lang, one of the key figures to come out of German cinema of the Weimar era.

While I have seen plenty of noir which focuses on familiar archetypes like the detective and the femme fatale, I always gravitate toward the movies about ordinary people who get in over their heads. 

While it does feature a great deal of manipulation, Scarlet Street is not principally concerned with a criminal scheme. It is about a small group of characters who are trying to escape their circumstance.

Cross is a schlub trapped in a loveless marriage, trapped by conventions and masculinities (with his dead predecessor’s portrait as a constant signifier of what he lacks). When he meets Kitty, he sees youth, beauty and (mistaken) support of his artistic pursuits.

While she shares some qualities with the fatale archetype, Joan Bennett’s Kitty is not a cliche. She is a young woman who uses her sex appeal because she has no other way forward. She is also ensnared in a doomed romance of her own, with Johnny, a man who is using her for his own benefit. One of the biggest tragedies of the film is that because of him, she ends up dead. 

Scarlet Street’s grey morality is probably due to its source: The movie was based on the 1931 film Le Chienne - I only realised this part of the way in, and it is hard not to see the shape of the narrative, especially as it heads towards the climax. Based on the strength of the remake, I am very curious to watch the original.

Knowing that it is a remake now, I wonder if the adaptation is responsible for some of the elements I did not quite buy. There were elements of the narrative that I found lumpy and contrived - thematically I like the reveal of the dead husband’s true fate, but the execution comes off as a contrivance.

The ending also feels a bit fudged, with Cross failing to complete his own life. 

However, this is one change that I kind of enjoy(?). There is something rather haunting about how it closes, with Cross forced to wander the earth while Kitty's voice haunts him. There is a brutal gut punch of a scene showing how his paintings have given Kitty immortality, which does carry a certain power. It is a suitably noirish end, even if the character feels too sympathetic to deserve such a fate.

In the lead, Robinson is a mile away from his tough-talking insurance man in Double Indemnity. He imbues Cross with a sadness and melancholy - he is an old man who is beginning to feel like he missed out on his youth. He is sleepwalking through life, with only his paintings to keep him awake.

Bennett is also pretty good as Kitty. There is a bite and solidness to her performance that makes for an interesting contrast with Robinson, particularly when she is under the thumb of Duryeas' Johnny. Duryea is a believable sleaze although he does not make sense as a heartbreaker.

Scarlet Street is a really terrific movie - the story is rather like a vice, but without the presence of the law as the arbritator of the protagonists' punishment. Technically, our heroes get away with it. They are just in no position to enjoy it.

Relevant 

Decoy

NZIFF 2020: The Kingmaker

A look at the life of Imelda Marcos and her perception of her role in the history and current state of the Philippines.

Watching the rise of people like Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump, it is hard to miss the ways their paths to power are following a familiar pattern: conservative adherents of older mythologised pasts who rise to power built on decades of systemic breakdown and economic decline.

A major criticism I have of news coverage of Donald Trump is treat him as an outlier, a singular evil who has turned the US into a fascist state, rather than the logical endpoint of decades of policy decisions and systemic inequalities.

While the context is unique, watching The Kingmaker felt like an echo.  

When the film begins, I was wondering what the film's approach would be - the first scene shows Marcos in a limo, stopping on a street and handing out money to children. For about the first quarter of the movie, Marcos is our guide, with an uninterrupted to-camera address about her life, her marriage, and her despair at the current state of her homeland.

I studied a bit on the Marcos regime at university, but that was a decade, so I was not prepared to be as skeptical as her words initially made me feel.

As the film progresses - and her lies become more blatant - the film breaks away from Marco's POV, intercutting her words with montages and information of what was really going on under the period of martial law. 

The film transitions from Marcos' voice, to those of the people she impacted, from villagers displaced by her desire to create an island reserve for her favourite African animals, to victims and opponents of the government, to current government officials, like Andres D. Bautista, who was head of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, who went from roles in government to living with family in the US after the rise of Duterte.

Marcos emerges as a shrewd manipulator, who simultaneously creates and believes her own view of reality. She can justify everything, and the film pays special attention to the ways in which historical revisionism has led to a rehabilitation of the Marcos. A particularly chilling sequence involves school children talking about how much better life was under martial law.

As the film heads toward the finish line, we follow Marcos' son Bongbong as he campaigns to become Vice President of the Philippines. The film also re-positions Duterte as an extension of this revisionism, but an active participant in the Marcos' plans to return to power.

I was amazed at the access that the filmmakers had to everyone. I was particularly surprised at Bongbong's appearance. Through his to-camera address and campaign appearances he comes across as a privileged rube, lacking his mothers' skills or sense of strategy. While Imelda sees him as the successor to the dynasty, the film highlights the ways in which he is only able to work as his mother's pawn. Once again, the parallels to other would-be despots are hard to miss.

The most unsettling aspect of the film is how, despite extended periods in her company, Marcos never reveals anything. At the start of the film, I wandered if the filmmakers had been taken in, and it would be a one-sided portrait, or a character study stripped of its broader context.

Instead, the movie offers a feature-length exercise in contrapuntal narration, juggling Marcos' own romanticized mythology with her cynical manipulation. Based on the characterization she gets here, I would not be surprised if Marcos would be happy with it.

The film may intend to offer a critique, but the final image that emerges from this film is of a formidable power player who is still terrifyingly relevant.

Related

The Surrogate

In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018)

The tale of a dress, its owners, and the store who birthed it. 

I caught this at the film festival last year. When I heard it was coming out in theatres, I had to see it again. At the time, I considered writing something, but I just found myself writing questions. Rather than throw some garbage out to the world, I decided to wait and write a vaguely coherent trash pile. 

Watching In Fabric for a second time, I was able to give with myself over to it - I was able to enjoy its effects rather than noting the technical ways in which these effects were created.

In Fabric takes the hyper-stylisation of giallo and uses its particular obsession with aesthetics to create a dark fable about capitalism and consumerism, as the filmmakers follow the dress from one character to another.

Set almost entirely in interiors, in an undetermined pre-digital era, the film almost feels like one of the portmanteau films Amicus studios used to put out in the 70s: one of the story threads concerns Sheila, a middle-aged divorcee who is looking for love. Played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Secrets and Lies), Sheila is the down-to-earth centre of the chaos around her. Her ex has moved on with another woman; her son is too self-absorbed to pay any attention to her. She also has to deal with two all-powerful and terrifyingly relaxed managers (Steve Oram and Barry Adamson), who note every minute change in her daily life, and measuring each minor deviation against the potential productivity of the bank.

Jean-Baptiste gives Sheila a world-weariness and sense of yearning that grounds the viewer in her everyday dilemmas. 

I have to say, acting in this kind of heightened context requires such a delicate balance. I watched another movie, Slice, which aims for its own heightened tone, but it never finds its footing, particularly in terms of the acting. Having that film in the back of my mind really highlighted how difficult it is to hit the right tone.

Reg, a sad sack who is belittled by everyone. Engaged to Babs (Hayley Squires), he is another lonely soul who stumbles into the dress's path. Younger, and more well-off, the couple supposedly have their future ahead of them, yet their life comes across as unsatisfied and barren. 

Neither of the films protagonists for the beauty standards of the store’s catalogue, and express dissatisfaction with themselves compared with the specifications of the dress. There is a hilarious scene in which the store clerks caress and massage a mannequin's body while the store owner pleasures himself: even the store’s crew are under the spell of these unreal bursts standards.

To call it an abstract re-working of giallo feels limiting. The mannequins recall Mario Bava's OG giallo, Blood and Black Lace, but that is one reference in a movie that feels beyond easy categorisation.

There is little context to make the movie more of an overt genre piece: we get a set-up of a death in the past, the implication that the dress is either haunted or cursed. Thankfully, this movie leans into the disorientation of classic Giallo without the tired exposition dumps that make most giallo far less interesting.

Ultimately what is worth emphasising is that this movie is hilarious. The two Orwellian bank managers who dominate Sheila's workplace; Reg's droning monologues; the antics of the fashion house; even the way the dress transports itself around. This movie is laugh-out-loud funny.

The premise almost feels like a dare - imagine a giallo, but instead of a killer with black gloves, it's a blood red dress. Strickland frames and shoots it like a classic movie monster (in shadows and shown in pieces). It could be a joke premise for a Grindhouse parody trailer.

A deadpan delight, In Fabric is hilarious and terrifying in equal measure. 

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NZIFF 2020: The Surrogate

Jess (Jasmine Batchelor) is acting as a surrogate for her best friends Josh (Chris Perfetti) and Aaron (Sullivan Jones). When the unborn child is diagnosed with Downs Syndrome, a fissure grows between the friends over whether to keep the child or not.

This movie has a great, hard premise, and it raises some very complex issues. I just wish it followed through on its convictions, and expressed its central theme in a way that displayed a genuine commitment to it.

My big issue is that Jess never feels like a person. I found it hard to get a hold of her personality. It is hard not to view her as an opportunist in an idealistic sense. 

She wants to be an advocate for causes, but her pregnancy and her decision to keep the child come across as her deciding to become an advocate for an issue rather than a desire to raise a child.

The film appeals to humanism and empathy, but I felt like the movie needed more of an overt arc for Jess.  While the movie is obvious with its exposition, in terms of its dramatic turns, I was totally lost. 

Compounding how hollow the film's message is is the way it completely objectifies disabled people. This is a movie about treating people as human beings, no matter their ability, yet the movie operates in a diegesis where disabled people are props for argument by non-disabled people.  

There is a scene midway through the film in which a supporting character is criticised for objectifying her child as a 'literary device' in her advocacy. It might be an intentional foreshadowing of the way Jess is objectifying her own pregnancy, but if that is the case then the movie's message ends up feeling rather mean-spirited. 

I am disinclined to think the movie is self-aware enough to recognise this irony since disabled characters are mostly offscreen, and never have active roles in the movie, or speak for themselves. At one point, Jess refers to a teacher with Downs Syndrome as an example of disabled people living fulfilled lives, but we never see her. She is just an example in an argument, not a person.

I think that is the key problem I had with the movie, and the main character's advocacy. Jess is advocating for an issue, but it never feels like she is advocating for people. 

The movie keeps reinforcing how self-involved Jess s commitment to issues is. It might be a choice of the filmmakers, but it robs her argument with her friends of any moral foundation, which is only compounded by the film's ending. 

Why are we watching this story if the main character does not believe the argument they are making? Where is the drama in that? 

If the movie had Jess reckon with her own need to stand for something (perhaps have a character with Downs Syndrome call her out?), that would give this movie another layer of complexity. It would also act as a good stepping stone for the character's development.

In a movie with a stronger sense of characterisation and narrative development, having a compromised central character pushing an argument forward would be intriguing, but I left the movie confused rather than conflicted about the questions it thinks it is raising.

Apart from the confusion of its characterisation, I found myself distracted by the sloppiness of the scripting.

There are multiple mini-info dumps peppered throughout ("I have nausea - it's a form of morning sickness"; "Your Australian neighbour let me in") and moments of obvious subtext that just come off as really bad jokes (as our heroine contemplates having an abortion, another character asks her if she would like scrambled eggs for breakfast). 

Most importantly, there is a didactic component to the arguments that means these scenes fail as drama. The big confrontation scene between the friends feels like contrived sides of a debate, rather than three people arguing. 

There is a kernel of a great story in The Surrogate - sadly, the execution never does it justice.