A nicely smoldering chamber piece of salty small-town intrigue, Blow The Man Down (USA, 2019) is a superbly understated crime thriller, the feature-film debut of writer / directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy.
The primary industry of Easter Cove, Maine is sea-fishing, and the manning of boats, harbor maintenance and mercantile offshoots thereof. As the film opens, widower Mary Margaret Connolly has just passed on; proprietor of the small but well-regarded Connolly Fish store, she’s survived by three of her best friends, Susie, Doreen and Gail (portrayed by character pros June Squibb, Marceline Hugot and Annette O’Toole), who toast her memory at her wake, and her two daughters, Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor), who will presumably keep the store going. Priscilla is the older, more responsible sister; Mary Beth not so much. Mary Beth, who wanted to blow this town, stayed on an extra year to help care for Mom, and she’s just learned that she and Priscilla are going to lose the house regardless. Bolting the wake at their home, furious, leaving Pris in a bit of a lurch, Mary Beth hooks up with the sleazy Gorski (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) at the local bar and joins him for a bender. But the drunken romance turns nasty quickly, and a violent confrontation leaves Gorski with a harpooned throat and a brick-smashed skull. Mary Beth must recruit Pris to help dispose of the grisly evidence, but their lives are now seemingly scarred. How long must they look over their shoulders until justice lays them low?
But there’s a whole ‘nother layer of justice, crime, corruption and retribution percolating just beneath this initial incident. A fourth good friend of the late Mary Margaret, Enid Nora Devlin (always-reliable Margo Martindale) runs the local house of ill-repute, but under a strictly narrow set of agreed-upon rules. Mary Margaret and her four friends knew that in the male-predominant industry in their small, remote fishing village, that market would be inevitably catered to by someone – why not establish the house amongst themselves and protect their town from the otherwise destructive consequences wrought by outsiders? Heedless of the fact that they’d long ago essentially established a criminal syndicate, this unofficial chamber of commerce must now contend with a new murder (beside the one we already know about), a sizeable missing extortion payment, the malleable loyalties of Enid’s employees and the possible betrayal of a longtime friend. The main murder / extortion suspect? Gorski. The prospects of investigating him? As we now know, slim.
Krudy and Savage Cole are journeyman filmhands, having worked on an impressive array of projects in an impressive array of jobs. Their screenplay draws on more than a few better films, but their collaborative directing chops, sense of tone and darkly-comedic style win you over. They orchestrate the suspense well – we know what’s unpleasantly happening, but without their resorting to violent excess. A Greek chorus of sea-chantey singers establishes a surprisingly grounded sense of history to some very modern ideas, and they were smart or lucky to land cinematographer and music-video veteran Todd Banhazl (Hustlers) as well – it’s a good-looking film with a real sense of visual rhythm. It’s a smaller film than what usually attracts Oscar attention, but Martindale, and the lean and efficient screenplay, may get some action. Highly recommended.
Another terrific film on many top-ten lists is Eliza Hittman’s superb and affecting Never Rarely Sometimes Always (USA, 2020), and rightly so. We meet Autumn Callahan (Sidney Flanigan, impressively understated) in an oldies-themed high-school talent show featuring the usual suspects: Elvis impersonators, male vocal trios, dancers doing ‘the hop,’ and Autumn, solo, singing a plaintive song about how oppressive her boyfriend can be (the very good but obscure 1963 Ellie Greenwich song “He’s Got The Power.”). A wag in the crowd interrupts her, shouting out “Slut!”, but Autumn carries on undeterred.
She’s a normal student in a small Pennsylvania town with an after-school grocery job, two younger sisters, a supportive-but-tired mom (Sharon Van Etten) and a grumpy and uncharitable stepdad (Ryan Eggold). Unfortunately, what Autumn also has is an unwanted pregnancy. She does the right homework, gets the right medical tests, confirms the pregnancy, and learns she can’t get an abortion in Pennsylvania without parental consent. With Stepdad, that’s a terrible idea. She must travel to New York, accompanied by her cousin and friend, Skylar (Talia Ryder), who works at the store with her.
Hittman’s film is a near-documentary-style chronicle of this particular slice of Autumn’s life. No one tells her directly not to get an abortion, but the obstacles are so interwoven into the system, so propagandized by some of the providers, and so daunting for the women making their own legal informed choices about their own bodies that we can’t help but empathize with Autumn’s persistence (and sadness). But Hittman is also attuned to how growing up female in America – as a student, as a person with a job, as a daughter from an imperfect family watching her friends contend with the same issues – is rife with smaller, but equally insistent, equally disheartening obstacles. Hittman’s presentation of Autumn is scrupulously objective; she doesn’t give us a lot of background on what led up to her pregnancy, doesn’t give us any history on her friendship with Skylar, and ends the film on a justifiable open-ended note. But Hittman’s show-don’t-tell approach is nonetheless profoundly informative.
And yet there’s nothing preachy or joyless or oppressive about Hittman’s narrative, either. There are moments of discouraging recognition, and a few rough spots in Autumn’s treatments, but we identify with her, and root for her, throughout. Well-shot on Super 16mm, veteran cinematographer Hélène Louvart is very particular about the girls’ interactions within their surroundings – it’s a similar approach to Darius Khondji’s striking work on the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems. It’s a compelling, subtly suspenseful journey, and one can’t help but be on Autumn’s side, regardless of whether they agree with her specific choices or not. Many Academy members will love, love, love this film, but I’m skeptical whether they’ll put their votes where their hearts are here. Despite my cynical view, though, the film itself is a must-see.
I believe both films are available on Amazon Prime these days, but search your providers.
Periscope In The Bathtub 