B+Directed by Antonio Campos Starring Rebecca Hall Review by Jon Kissel |  |
Antonio Campos depicts the rare female anti-hero in Christine, the adaptation of the tragic end of Christine Chubbock. The last few months of Chubbock's life are depicted in nervy, brittle fashion, culminating in her infamous on-air suicide during the evening news. The second of two films about Chubbock released in 2016, the other, an experimental documentary called Kate Plays Christine, has high expectations set for it based on the strength of Campos' entry.
In the lead, Rebecca Hall is mesmerizing in an intense performance as a twisted version of Holly Hunter's character in Broadcast News. Both characters are crack journalists caught up in relationships with their coworkers, but where that's played for romantic comedy in James L. Brooks' 80's classic, Campos and writer Craig Shilowich use the template as the scaffolding of a thwarted life. Hall's Christine has the picture in her head of what her life should look like, but after being demoted from big city Boston to small market Sarasota and never so much as having a serious romantic relationship, she's moving in the opposite direction. She's presented with outs, in offers of collaboration with her coworkers (Michael C. Hall, Maria Dizzia) and tentative dating proposals from the shy weatherman (Timothy Simons), but because they conflict with her self-image as someone who did it by herself while nabbing the lead anchor (Hall), she can't say yes. Campos could have gone with sexism as a shorthand for her being held back, demonizing the station manager (Tracy Letts) and making Hall into a cad, but he puts all of the blame for her stagnation on Christine's shoulders, save for some portion reserved to the changing economics of the time.
Hall's Christine is a tough person to like, but as the film creeps towards its inevitable climax, the feeling is one of empathetic dread instead of anticipatory comeuppance. The merging of director, writer, and actor in Christine makes her a hugely successful anti-hero, someone who lashes out because of recognizable personal weakness. She gets so close to breakthroughs, such that one can see the possibility of change working its way across her forehead before she backs off and shuts down a better future. To accept a solution on someone else's terms or inspiration would be a kind of vulnerability, and as demonstrated by a telling scene in which she's singing peacefully in her car, only to abruptly stop when someone pulls alongside her, vulnerability isn't a playable card in her deck. It's so often male characters that project an impenetrable exterior onto the world, and where those films often frame that approach as admirable, it's framed as pointless in Christine, a blinkered approach that kept out anyone who wanted to help and only served to make the protagonist's life smaller.
Convincingly set in the 70's, Campos orients the viewer in this time period with more than costumes and hairstyling. Everyone's getting a little more acquainted with psychology and therapy, and they somewhat recognize their own coping strategies for the stress of the job. Simons' weatherman gets drunk. Hall's anchor is a recovering coke addict and a regular feature at the local support group. Dizzia's camerawoman sings and eats ice cream. All of this language around habits and activities that relieve stress evades Christine, who translates her frustrations into a deeper focus and internalization towards work that is not what her boss wants. It's not that she should take up Simons' habit of drinking, but that she has to release the pressure valve. She gets in an endless cycle where the off-ramps are slowly reduced to the one she ultimately takes. She's unable to recognize that people around her have problems like hers, and would be happy to commiserate, but there's that vulnerability problem again.
Suicide has a hundred fathers, and who knows why the real Christine did what she did. Campos and Hall craft a tight case that might bear no resemblance to actual events, but in their rich portrayal, they do make her far more than a mere historical footnote, an accomplishment equal to, if not greater than, faithful accuracy. B+
Hall's Christine is a tough person to like, but as the film creeps towards its inevitable climax, the feeling is one of empathetic dread instead of anticipatory comeuppance. The merging of director, writer, and actor in Christine makes her a hugely successful anti-hero, someone who lashes out because of recognizable personal weakness. She gets so close to breakthroughs, such that one can see the possibility of change working its way across her forehead before she backs off and shuts down a better future. To accept a solution on someone else's terms or inspiration would be a kind of vulnerability, and as demonstrated by a telling scene in which she's singing peacefully in her car, only to abruptly stop when someone pulls alongside her, vulnerability isn't a playable card in her deck. It's so often male characters that project an impenetrable exterior onto the world, and where those films often frame that approach as admirable, it's framed as pointless in Christine, a blinkered approach that kept out anyone who wanted to help and only served to make the protagonist's life smaller.
Convincingly set in the 70's, Campos orients the viewer in this time period with more than costumes and hairstyling. Everyone's getting a little more acquainted with psychology and therapy, and they somewhat recognize their own coping strategies for the stress of the job. Simons' weatherman gets drunk. Hall's anchor is a recovering coke addict and a regular feature at the local support group. Dizzia's camerawoman sings and eats ice cream. All of this language around habits and activities that relieve stress evades Christine, who translates her frustrations into a deeper focus and internalization towards work that is not what her boss wants. It's not that she should take up Simons' habit of drinking, but that she has to release the pressure valve. She gets in an endless cycle where the off-ramps are slowly reduced to the one she ultimately takes. She's unable to recognize that people around her have problems like hers, and would be happy to commiserate, but there's that vulnerability problem again.
Suicide has a hundred fathers, and who knows why the real Christine did what she did. Campos and Hall craft a tight case that might bear no resemblance to actual events, but in their rich portrayal, they do make her far more than a mere historical footnote, an accomplishment equal to, if not greater than, faithful accuracy. B+
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