An ordinary woman is seen in a therapy session apparently in a residential facility and appears to be near getting discharged by the counselor. We see various scenes from her life, particularly a number of brief relationships with men, various attempts at auditions for various roles in plays, both with questionable results.
At the same time, we eventually find out that her mother is supposedly a good actress but had a falling out with her and that put this woman in a residential facility. The Director apparently to together with her lead star (whom she’s known in real life from childhood), wrote up an in-depth biography of her character, and then interviewed her for ten hours prior to shooting the movie. All the dialogue in the movie is also improvised.
Film Review for You Won’t Miss Me
The introspective ramblings of a young, underemployed actress get a thorough airing in “You Wont Miss Me,” an experimental portrait of a New York misfit for whom sex and the city are no longer enough.
The film’s unsteady heroine is a 23-year-old, Shelly Brown (a full-on performance by Stella Schnabel, daughter of Julian), a spectacular screw-up whose emotional intensity alienates everyone around her. Odd but not certifiable — at least according to the shrink (an unseen Noah Kimmerling) who’s smoothing her exit from a psychiatric center — she feels a little too much and drinks a little too often. This makes her difficult to like and almost impossible to love, her exaggerated responses to one-night stands sending lackadaisical lovers running for the hills.
Whether audiences embrace “You Wont Miss Me” or decide that its title is prophetic will depend on their empathy for its messed-up lead, who is rarely off screen. Wearing the hangover eyes and morning-after hair that women only on the right side of 30 can get away with, Shelly attends excruciating auditions, hangs with similarly aimless friends and engages in lackluster couplings with scruffy young men. These brief encounters sometimes place her on the business end of verbal and physical abuse, instigated partly by her tempt-and-demur flirting style and a tendency to self-destruct every time professional opportunity knocks.
Between humiliations, Shelly strolls and ponders her lack of meaningful relationships in throaty voice-over, while the camera drifts alongside. This kind of privileged, self-involved whining has become all too familiar in American independent cinema — despite never actually working, Shelly easily affords booze and cigarettes and out-of-town trips — but Ms. Schnabel (who created the character and story with her director, Ry Russo-Young), gives these bleatings a seductive vulnerability.
“At least I don’t come across like a cry for help,” says Shelly’s friend (Carlen Altman) during a drunken flare-up in a hotel room in Atlantic City, the barb landing with the sting of accuracy. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times’s products and services.
Even so, the film’s generally poor acting (the cast is rife with nonprofessionals), insipid conversations (on burning questions like whether a zit is ripe for squeezing) and bargain-basement production values are a tough sell. Fortunately, Ms. Russo-Young — as she proved with her first feature, the good-looking “Orphans” (2007) — has an aptitude for creating emotionally evocative visual landscapes. Here, her hiccuping timeline and strangely compelling jumble of images (shot in five formats by Kitao Sakurai and Ku-Ling Siegel) eerily mimic Shelly’s fragmented state of mind.
For all its many irritations, “You Wont Miss Me” has undeniable punch, a frayed energy that feels janglingly unstable. Is Shelly crazy or just a pain in the neck? We’re not really sure, and neither is she.
You Won’t Miss Me (2012)
Directed by: Ry Russo-Young
Starring: Stella Schnabel, Simon O’Connor, Zachary Tucker, Noah Kimmerling, Carlen Altman, Sarah Ball, Borden Capalino, Josephine Wheelwright, David Anzuelo, Aaron Katz, Barlow Jacobs
Screenplay by: Ry Russo-Young, Stella Schnabel
Cinematography by: Kitao Sakurai
Film Editing by: Gil Kofman, Ry Russo-Young
Music by: Will Bates
Distributed by: IFC Films
Release Date: December 12, 2012
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