Thursday 12 October 2023

NZIFF 2023: Bad Behavior (Alice Englehart, 2023)

Former child actor Lucy (Jennifer Connelly) books into a retreat with guru Elon (Ben Wishaw), seeking some kind of spiritual resolution. 


Meanwhile, her daughter Dylan (Alice Englehart) is a stuntwoman working on a film in New Zealand.


Eventually their respective paths are forced to intersect…





Written, directed by and starring Jane Campion’s daughter Alice Englehart, Bad Behavior is more of a movie of tone and vibe than narrative.

 

Connelly is on great, deadpan form as an emotionally-stunted woman on an internal, sisyphean quest for inner peace. The parent-child dynamic is not that interesting, but the film’s droll sense of the absurd keeps the film watchable, if not compelling. 

But once the two leads are united, the film loses itself.


The movie is more confident when it is just anchored to Connelly as she slowly disintegrates at the retreat, a comically pleasant facility seemingly designed to challenge the tightly-wound Lucy at every turn. 


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