Tribeca 2021: "The Justice of Bunny King" review
Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 2:31PM by Jason Adams
I know from untold years of movie-watching experience that it's nowhere near as simple as "just turn the camera on and point it at an incredibly gifted actor (or two)" to end up with a great film worth watching. There have been too many painful yet well-cast examples to the contrary to count. But it's hard to feel that argument in all of my heart in the wake of watching Essie Davis and Thomasin McKenzie in The Justice of Bunny King, first-time filmmaker Gaysorn Thavat's powerhouse drama that's just premiered at Tribeca. These two actors, especially Davis, really seem at this point unstoppable. They just have faces you want to stare at, surroundings be damned.
That's not to say that Bunny King lets them down... Thavat's proves to be an instinctively gifted storyteller, foremost knowing the value in those faces and performances...
She never lets her film, which could have easily slipped into dreaded "poverty porn," get in their way. Davis plays the Bunny of the title, who is seriously down on her luck when we first meet her, making dollars from washing people's windshields and crashing on the couch of her ungrateful creep of a brother-in-law's as she tries to win back custody of her own two kids. The film doles out Bunny's history only when it absolutely needs to, never cramming an info dump upon us, but the necessary revelations about what got her to this place always land at the right moment, and always in just the right amount. Bunny's situation is bad but the film is never pushy about rubbing our faces in it, which makes a big difference.
And a lot of that comes from Davis' tremendous performance, which is every second honest and sharp and darkly funny somehow to boot, always refusing to strain for the audience's affections but sweeping us along all the same -- Davis shows us a woman who keeps making decisions that will obviously turn her bad situation far worse but she makes these decisions so clear to us watching that I can't even bring myself to call them "bad decisions." Davis, and the film, illustrate what is driving Bunny so precisely that we're there with her every step of the way. When Bunny scoops up her niece Tonya (McKenzie) and hits the road we know we're in for some Thelma & Louise shit of disastrous proportions but we know this is also the only option. Burn it all down, Bunny!
The film's merciless about shining a light on the ways the system's rigged against women like Bunny and Tonya when all they are looking for is the base level of respect and humanity afforded people with more power. But it does so with enough black humor, and with enough of Davis' defiant strength on display, that it never feels like a meaningless wallow in impotence -- what Davis' performance ended up reminding me of the most was my favorite Pacino, his work in Dog Day Afternoon. That's what we're dealing with here. That level of artistry. Whether the world will celebrate this astonishing performer in the same way, in the way she's earned, is left to be seen. But me and Bunny knows she's worthy of everything.
Reader Comments (2)
I have never heard of this movie before but I am completely head-over-heels in love with Essie Davis so I'm sold.
Someday Essie Davis will get her due, in terms of international acclaim for her astonishing talent.
I will look out for this film, thanks for the heads-up.