Post by StevePulaski on Jun 18, 2017 22:03:20 GMT -5
Blue Jay (2016)
Directed by: Alex Lehmann
Directed by: Alex Lehmann
Sarah Paulson and Mark Duplass.
Rating: ★★★
Blue Jay opens on the somber, quiet life of Jim Henderson (Mark Duplass), who returns to his hometown in California looking to put his late mother's house on the market. He breaks free from the confines of a once-comforting location that has since turned smothering to go to the supermarket, where he bumps into Amanda (Sarah Paulson) in the most uncinematic of ways. Jim anxiously avoids eye-contact, but can't stop himself from glancing over at her as the two examines the options of the bread-aisle. Nervous body-language and unrequited motions simultaneously looking for attention and trying to minimize it on Jim's behalf eventually get Amanda to notice him and the two rekindle after years of not seeing one another. This setup is a lot of things, but it's not a meet-cute, blessed so.
For the remaining seventy minutes, director Alex Lehmann and writer Duplass let the conversations between Jim and Amanda - many of which improvised, I presume, given Duplass' track-record - steer the movie. The two go for coffee at Blue Jay, what used to be their favorite spot, mix a six pack of beer, and head back to Jim's humble abode in order to reflect upon old memories. They find the letters Jim wrote to Amanda many years ago, with Amanda finding an unopened one and concealing it in her purse, and also unearth karaoke recordings of the two rapping on blank cassette tapes.
All this seems like an inconsequential get-together of really close friends or former lovers until it isn't, and the third act piles on the truth, reality, and cold, hard decisions that worked to pry this seemingly perfect couple apart from one another. In the meantime, however, conversations flow like a soothing river, and both Duplass and Paulson have that unmistakably natural charisma that makes them connect. In particular, Paulson - who has made a career out of quietly being the favorite part in a movie you saw recently - contrasts the evident melancholy of Duplass' character with a sense of stability and easy-going personality that never takes a nosedive into something cloyingly artificial.
Duplass and Paulson are the only two actors in Blue Jay, save for a cameo by character actor Clu Gulager as a cornerstore clerk, meaning the weight of the film rests on their experienced shoulders. As much as I love his early work as a writer, director, and actor, I'm not sure Duplass could've pulled off this performance in his Puffy Chair/Baghead days. Blue Jay demonstrates a growth in nuance and ability in both his writing and performing skills. He's the same man who has made a career out of making low-budget, thoroughly contemporary efforts that exude humanism and tender moments in characters' lives writers sometimes write around. Here, he makes something effective in multiple layers; a somewhat challenging picture that one can deeply involve themselves in and grab on to with ease and emerge fulfilled by something rather unexpected.
Even when Duplass is tasked with finally having to come clear with the backstory behind Jim and Amanda's relationship, he does so in a way that doesn't lumber through melodramatic platitudes (not that he ever did). It's a large risk in a film that operates mostly on making us remain patient in order to be rewarded with the information we seek about these two individuals, for that's what they are at the film's core. Individuals who took separate paths that only so happen to fatefully intersect during a totally banal moment of their day.
Blue Jay might not be my favorite of Duplass' films (I'm very partial to Jeff, Who Lives at Home, which he directed with his brother Jay, in addition to Creep, one of the strangest horror films you're likely to discover on Netflix), but it's one that shows considerable growth for him. On top of that, it asserts the modest directorial command and tone of Lehmann, who also serves as the film's cinematographer, to provide the film with black-and-white videography to give it a lovely, timeless quality. Blue Jay is not the film to immediately judge; it's a film that, like some friendships, you must let simmer before you can pass adequate judgment.
Starring: Mark Duplass, Sarah Paulson, and Clu Gulager. Directed by: Alex Lehmann.