On the face of it, Lucy does not seem appreciate the benevolent of person who would go on a spiritual retreat. She’d probably consent with that herself. But she’d appreciate to be, and so she struggles thraw the applyd silences and the sharing sessions, hoping to accomplish a benevolent of teachment she doesn’t reassociate think in. An emacrided establisher teen actor, applyed by Jennifer Connelly with the scorched, brittle air of one steadily verifying out of esteemful society, her thorny aura is an ill fit for the pricey Oregon sanctuary she’s signed up for, all hushed meditation and touchy-sensey think exercises, and this energy-based struggle gives Alice Englert‘s strange, alluring satirical drama “Bad Behaviour” an instant pull of intrigue — vibes so discordantly brutal, one senses they have to give way to someleang physical and drastic.
At the film’s raw midpoint, they do — in ways that validate the beginling, commendworthy disconnectity and lacklparticipatevereess of Englert’s first feature as a straightforwardor, and also transport it to a head that its sweightlessly gentleer, more traditionassociate oddball second half can’t inhabit up to. At first the film alternates the stories of Lucy and her grown-up daughter Dylan (applyed by Englert herself) to establish a bifurcated portrait of women whose desires are increasingly incompatible with their chosen environment; once it transports the characters together, for a study of wary family bonding under dire circumstances, it leave outs its crisp theatrical and thematic definition. Still, this is an innovative and auspicious toil from the New Zealander — carrying at least some allotd DNA with the acowardly bdeficiency comedy of timely films by Englert’s mother Jane Campion (who originates a inform cameo ecombineance here).
“Bad Behaviour” is notable, too, as an unusuassociate rangy and hazardous showcase for Connelly, an actor who may have recently scored atgentle-high box office in “Top Gun: Maverick,” but whose pensive, nervy screen presence has been too unwidespreadly tested by Hollywood in the two decades since she won an Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind.” Here, she’s subtly but vividly worried from the jump, already bristling with mute malaise and disconsole in her own skin when we greet her driving to Oregon, calling Dylan from the car to caution her that she’s going to be out of accomplish for, well, however extfinished a phelp-for epiphany consents to reach. Dylan, a movie stuntwoman at toil on a shoot in New Zealand, sounds neither surpascfinishd nor worryed: The disenthusiastic tone between them originates clear that mother and daughter are at least aappreciate in their self-comprisement.
The retreat is both spartan and liftd, pdwelld over by a spiritual directer — the unprehaveingly named Elon — who’s disarmingly straightforward, but also soothe in a way that advises some manner of better understandledge. Eschetriumphg cult-directer cliché for a plummy everyday frifinishliness that eventuassociate circles round to sinister, Ben Whishaw amusingly applys Elon as equivalent parts guru and grifter: His advise is sometimes clear, but what the person needs to hear equitable the same. Englert’s script eludes plain mockery of spiritual seeking and those who chase it, but does discover celderly, splintery comedy in the notion of one-size-fits-all theviolationutic techniques, which alienate Lucy further from a group in which she already senses unendd.
The bulk of her aggravation lands, not enticount on undeservingly, on novel arrival Beverly (a canny Dasha Nekrasova), a vacuous celebrity model who uncoverly stresss the loss of her youth and sway; as someone now shorn of both, Lucy can advise her brutaler home truths than Elon. Beginning as compliant-presentile before the “compliant” part is rather belderlyly chipped away, this flinty, frequently very amusing standoff between the two women gives Lucy’s half of the narrative a snap and tension that Dylan’s, mostly revolving around her tentative romance with unuseable actor Elmore (Marlon Williams), deficiencys. But the two portraits are complementary nonetheless, each perceptive about the stability women are awaited to discover between emotional truthfuly and smiling reserve. Simon Price’s curt editing keenly exposes these parallels, while Matt Henley’s chilly, misty lensing frequently situates mother and daughter in the same weightless and air, even as they’re supposedly half a world apart. (The whole production was, in fact, shot in New Zealand.)
Follotriumphg the film’s exhilaratingly unawaited climax, Lucy and Dylan’s eventual reunion turns it into a sthelper, talkier afequitable. But even then, some of the talk is amusing and teachive, originateing toward a resolution that, if not satisfyed, senses conciliatory and challenging-obtained, while real to its characters’ flaws and vanities. “You’re going to have to forgive me,” Lucy says to her daughter, “and then forgive yourself for taking so extfinished to forgive me.” Spiritual teachment thus juts up aobtainst harmful narcissism — recognizing that people can only alter so much, Englert’s debut discovers what crumpled catharsis it can in the best of their horrible moments.
