Her Smell

2019 punk movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A troubled rock star tries to overcome addiction while a daughter threatens to ruin her career.

Initially, I thought Elizabeth Moss's tongue was going to do most of the heavy lifting here, but it didn't take long for me to adjust to the wild rhythms of her performance. I like my performances big, and it doesn't come much bigger than this, a bravado performance that creates this dangerous and barely human trainwreck of a character. Moss hoists this story in five chapters on her unsteady shoulders and then hops right on a tightrope above a pit of crocodiles and cocaine and takes daring chance after daring chance. She's channeling Gena Rowlands, and even if the movie was terrible, it would be worth watching just to see what she does.

At one point, Moss's character's mother says, "No, I don't want to see what happens next." Boy, I sure did. Alex Ross Perry's as daring with the structure and shot selections of this character study as Moss is with creating the character. The movie's a series of typhoons juxtaposed with drizzles, the camera just objectively observing all these visible conflicts in extended sequences and somehow managing to capture the main character's inner conflicts as well.

And a moment when Moss sits down at a piano? Jeez Louise!