Black Bear - 2020
Updated: Nov 18, 2022
This review may contain spoilers.
Aubrey Plaza is a FORCE. OF. NATURE. A human dynamo of passion, vivacity, and snarky self-confidence so unique in the Hollywood machine. (Yes, that is a statement against the industry's Stepford Wives-esque cookie cutter mold for all females to conform to some universal standard). Whatever ridiculous thing that may be, Plaza both subverts and transcends it entirely. Indeed, she explodes it. She bursts off the screen here as well, in a performance that should garner mention for awards. It likely won't (because the world is stupid), but in managing to be continually cast as what appears to be a version of her authentic self, Aubrey is doing plenty of winning for all of us.
Fortunately for us, she's not the only thing Black Bear has going for it. This is a true three-hander, with Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon rounding out the cast nicely. Throughout the film's two main acts, the three characters weave and move physically (and mentally) in a serpentine fashion around one another. Themes of adultery and temptation, the psychology of manipulation rise to the fore. So too does jealousy borne of desire. The characters fight and argue and opine in search of answers from everything to feminism vs. traditional gender roles and the rise and fall of religious belief systems. It's a fantastic piece of writing, and the game of one-ups-manship, while familiar, is never less than entirely riveting.
You would probably guess from the small cast and this dialogue-driven description that the story is almost "stagy," and you would be entirely correct. Black Bear is a real chamber piece. It bears marks of the theatre not only in its constituent parts but also in its other major theme - the collision of life and art. For this is a tale about the creative process, more specifically its inventive use of personal experience and trauma.
Plaza's character Allison gets more than she bargained for in this regard in the film's first act. She is a director, actress, and screenwriter who has come to the remote cabin of Gabe (Abbott) and Blair (Gadon) in search of some peace away from the bustle of her "normal life." She aims to relax and unwind, and in so doing, to find new material for her next screenplay. When the couple takes her in, Allison soon learns that she has become an interloper of their fragile union. The two frequently argue over the smallest semantic details, degrade each other's work, and demonstrate just how incompatible they are.
After a particularly contentious dinner together, things change. Just when we think we've got the hang of this one, when the notes start to ring out like a familiar melody (after all, Plaza is a PERFECT smoldering temptress), director Lawrence Michael Levine flips the story on its head. And THIS is where all the fun is to be had in discussing Black Bear. After a certain car accident, the film completely resets itself. Now, we're witnessing the filming of a small budget indie flick in the same cabin. The actors have the same character names, but their behavior has changed: The femme fatale has shifted to another, and the married couple is all new.
Now, we're in the weeds, and this is where Black Bear takes flight. I must admit, at first I was reticent to embrace the change. I was quite liking the affair that was building between Allison and Gabe, and the histrionics of Blair building dramatic tension as a result. Now we were in deeper uncharted waters, searching for which direction was north. But this is the fun of it, see. For my part, I felt that the second act was the "real story," where Allison was an actress filming a movie for her husband while being gaslit by him and Blair. I reasoned this was the trauma she suffered, prompting her to write a work of fiction in the first half where SHE was the enchantress and the heroine. (This reading is, of course, artistically ironic because the creation of the movie in the second half is what "actually happened" while the first half, being her movie, only appeared real).
But I read another reviewer who argued the exact OPPOSITE. He saw the first half as representing what actually occurred, while the second was a fictionalized version created by Blair (perhaps in a coma after the accident) in her pain of betrayal. And a good friend offered a third interpretation whereby BOTH acts were in the writer's head, as she worked to craft and hone her new screenplay. In this reading, the only "real thing" is Allison's trip to and from the docks and her sitting at the table writing!
Which brings us to the bear. The bear ends both acts convincingly. He (or she) is a menacing presence at the edge of the film's frame, threatening to infiltrate and destroy the proceedings. Perhaps the best reading of the bear is as "writing block," i.e. the thing that had Allison searching for respite at the cabin in the first place.
In the end, whichever version is closest to the truth is up for debate. Still, what IS certain is that this is a rich text. A well-written chamber piece about the creative process and just how difficult it can be to birth something ex nihilo. How interruptions to a work in progress can feel like prodigious predators, and how painful relationships twist even the best creations into layered enigmas. It's a heck of a piece of writing and direction from Levine. Most of all, it's Hurricane Aubrey, so we better batten down the hatches and sit up and listen.
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