by Murtada
The year of Michelle Pfeiffer continues. We’ve seen the trailer and pictures from Murder on the Orient Express. We've seen the poster for mother! (sacrilege she’s not on it). We’ve seen her on HBO as Ruth Madoff. And now her Sundance film, Where is Kyra?, made its way to Brooklyn and played at BAMCinemaFest last weekend.
Andrew Dosunmu (Mother of George) collaborates once again with Bradford Young to gorgeous results. This time Pfeiffer’s transfixing visage supplements their beautiful frames with movie star magic...
The story follows Kyra, a 50-something out of work recent divorcee who’s falling into a pit of hopelessness. She can’t find work and her elderly mother, on whose pension she relies, suddenly dies. She meets another person trying to stay afloat (Kiefer Sutherland) and even genuine affection and companionship does not seem to help either of them. It’s a devastating story of utter despair and the crazy choices it forces on Kyra.
Dosunmu said that he was inspired by Cindy Sherman, and every frame is a tableau come to sumptuous life. And in Pfeiffer’s face he’s found the perfect vessel. Whole scenes play just on her face even when other actors are present in the scene. It’s intimate yet unsettling because of the melancholic story. I was the beat up little seagull watching this. It was hard to watch because Pfeiffer makes one root hard for Kyra even as she makes one disastrous choice after another. The film hits close to home. We could all become Kyra, suddenly too old to find employment. So I was grateful for the one homage to Pfeiffer’s stardom, a slo-mo scene of her joyfully jumping rope with a few kids.
Unfortunately the film does not have a US distributor yet. We can understand why. This is the type of movie that luxuriates in the ritual of preparing a bath and devotes many minutes to taking it in. But come on, it’s Pfeiffer. It’s Pfeiffer in almost every frame. It can be marketed just as that. Many will be there opening weekend for her. Don’t deny us this movie, money people.