Movie Review: Her Smell

Her Smell **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Alex Ross Perry.

Written by: Alex Ross Perry.

Starring: Elisbeth Moss (Becky Something), Cara Delevigne (Crassie Cassie), Dan Stevens (Danny), Agyness Deyn (Marielle Hell), Gayle Rankin (Ali van der Wolff), Ashley Benson (Roxie Rotten), Dylan Gelula (Dottie O.Z.), Eka Darville (Ya-ema), Lindsay Burdge (Lauren), Hannah Gross (Tiffany), Virginia Madsen (Ania Adamcyzk), Eric Stoltz (Howard Goodman), Amber Heard (Zelda E. Zekiel), Keith Poulson (Keith the Engineer).

 

The cinema of Alex Ross Perry has always been somewhat punishing – he traps you with characters who are often insufferable – artists who are obsessed with their own perceived greatness, at the price of pushing everyone else away. His breakthrough – The Color Wheel – was about a pair of navel gazing siblings on a long car ride, and for about 70 of its 83-minute runtime, I found the film suffocating and awful – and then he comes up with an absolutely brilliant ending, which I don’t think saves the movie, but certainly makes it interesting. His Listen Up, Philip, starred Jason Schwartzman in what could be described as the darkest timeline of what his Rushmore character may wind up being – an insufferable author who styles himself after his idol – clearly modeled at Philip Roth – and maybe becoming even worse. Queen of Earth was a brilliant two-hander about two women, who were once good friends, who are stuck together at a Lake House, and pushing each other closer to the edge. Last year’s Golden Exits was my least favorite of his films – the most Woody Allen-esque of his films, about white privilege and naval gazing among middle-aged Brooklyn-ites. And yet as deliberating punishing and alienating as all of those films have been to some degree, he takes it up another level in the brilliant Her Smell – a film about a Courtney Love-like rock star, who over the course of five segments, over a 10-year span, pushes everyone away, and then starts to take steps back towards becoming a person. The lead performance by Perry regular Elisabeth Moss – goes from absolute broke in the role of Becky Something – not even attempting to be likable or sympathetic for the first three segments of the film. You will almost undoubtedly grow to find her as insufferable as everyone else in the film. Which is what makes the final two segments as touching as they can be.

 

The film opens with one of the only full length musical performances we see from Becky and her bandmates – Something She. They are clearly a Grrl band in the 1990s vein, and the opening song is actually quite good. It’s when the band gets off stage when all hell breaks loose. This is the last date on the tour, and everyone is frazzled. During this long opening segment – which Alex Ross Perry, cinematographer Sean Price Williams and editor Robert Greene – brilliantly stage to make it look like it’s taking place in real time. Everything revolves around Becky – which is exactly the way she likes it. She has various “spiritual advisers” around her, which further isolates her. Through the segment, she’ll lash out at her long suffering bandmates – bassist Marielle Hell (Agyness Deyn) – who like Becky is on drugs, but isn’t as out of control and drummer Ali van der Wolff (Gayle Rankin) – who seemingly tries to keep everything together. There’s also Becky’s ex (Dan Stevens) – there with their infant daughter, and his new girlfriend, and long suffering record exec Howard (Eric Stoltz). There’s also a young musician who Becky helped to kick start her career, Zelda (Amber Heard) – who is now more successful. Things are absolutely chaotic – as Becky spirals out of control. The next two segments – one in a recording studio, where the band cannot record anything because of Becky, and Howard is trying to kick start a younger band – influenced by Becky – and things get worse, and the second before another gig – in which Becky hits rock bottom, and her mother (Virginia Madsen) shows up to make matters even worse. Basically, the first 90 minutes of Her Smell is daring high wire act in which Moss goes off the walls crazy, and spirals further and further down, driving every single person who cares about her further and further away.

 

The last two segments are certainly less chaotic, less angry and alienating. The fourth segment is Becky at her lowest – she has lost pretty much everything and everyone she cares about, but she is sober for the first time in years, and looking to make amends with others – and figure out who she is. The films most inspired musical moment is in this segment – as Becky sings a cheesy 1980s pop ballad to her daughter – in its entirety, in one shot, in a way that I don’t think her daughter full grasps, but we in the audience surely do. And, in an odd twist for Perry, the film almost has a happy ending – or happy for him at least. Whereas the typical Perry hero(ine) has driven everyone else away, and is left alone with their own “genius”. By the end, Becky has at least realized that she needs others around her – something most of the Perry leads never quite figure out.

 

Elisabeth Moss, who has become one of the best working actresses today, delivers her best performance so far as Becky. It’s not often that women get a role like this – that of the difficult genius, and that is definitely Beck in this film. Through three segments, Moss makes Becky increasingly frazzled and off-putting. People put up with her because they have to – they make money off of her, and as long as that money is flowing, they will stick around. And yet, there is also genuine affection there as well – before each segment, we see a brief snippet of home movies from happier times for the band, and that affection is real. They want her to get healthy, but eventually she will push them all away. Even at the end of the film, Becky’s recovery is teetering on the edge. Maybe she’ll be able to build everything up again – and on more solid footing this time.

 

To get there though, Perry and Moss and their collaborators really do put the audience through the ringer. This is not an easy sit – and some will likely run screaming from the theatrical, the feeling of oppressive captivity all encompassing. You are trapped in those rooms with Becky bouncing off the walls. It’s a difficult movie to sit through, But it a brilliant examination of this type of artist. If Perry has always worried about becoming one of his characters – alone and isolated – at least in Her Smell, he sees a way out. And it comes at the end of this daring high wire act of a film.