THE STORY – A renowned actress faces mounting pressure during show rehearsals when her estranged sister suddenly reappears after three decades. Their unexpected reunion stirs up buried family tensions forcing both women to face their shared history.
THE CAST – Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Dianne Wiest, Odessa A’zion & Toby Wallace
THE TEAM – Cody Fern (Director/Writer) & Devon Bostick (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 115 Minutes
Festivals are often littered with films by actors who take their turn at directing. Sometimes these films feel little more than exercises in hubris, an “I think I can too” notion fueled by a position gleaned from one experience meant to translate to another. At other times, minor miracles occur, where there’s a sense that, perhaps, this isn’t merely some thespian using the fruits of their professional connections to elevate their own standing, but the emergence of a new, true talent, a debut worth championing, worth celebrating. Such is the case with Cody Fern’s remarkable film “Closing Night”. Co-written with another actor, Devon Bostick (“Oppenheimer,” “Mile End Kicks”), the Australian Fern is most known to audiences for his multi-year work as the Antichrist on the “American Horror Story” franchise, as well as a season of the well-watched “House of Cards.”
“Closing Night” takes on a horror story of a different kind, following a performer’s wilting capacities as mental deterioration robs her of her capacities and her craft. Shaped as a family drama with a bit of Broadway boisterousness thrown in, on first blush this feels little more than a straightforward New York story shared so many times before. And yet, thanks to deft writing, wonderful staging and, above all, stupendous performances from actors at the top of their game, viewers are treated to something truly special. Sarah Paulson, Fern’s fellow performer on “American Horror Story,” positively shines as the emotional and narrative focus of the film. Her angular, gaunt features and tightly pulled back hair provide a perfect image for such a tightly wound individual, one who has divorced herself from the rest of her family, eschewing the past while finding success on the stage. Her more frumpy, anxious sister (Naomi Watts) reluctantly leaves the beauty salon where she works with her mother to travel to New York. Responding to a request for a “family reunion” with her estranged sibling, she instead beelines to visit her son (Toby Wallace) and his live-in girlfriend (Odessa A’zion).
Seen in isolation, the various familial challenges and confrontations could easily be written off as narratively simplistic, yet Fern and Bostick’s gift is to take what feels common and inject just enough originality to keep things both engaging and surprising. There are plenty of other NYC stories that are evoked here, especially from the tonally-complex works of peak Woody Allen, yet there remains a brash, welcome originality to how the film unfolds. Yet it’s the purity of performance from the characters in this film, especially the women, that makes this such a stunning showcase. In fact, Wallace’s role as the hapless son is the most thankless, his relatively two-dimensional character paling compared to the meaty roles that the rest of the women have been gifted. Paulson’s perfection is obvious, but the twitchy, hunched take by Watts is equally worthy of praise, navigating what easily could be thought of as overwrought or trite and instead simply reading as believably broken. A’zion shines as she has of late, yet again affirming her as a performer that simply makes scenes better with her inclusion.
And then there’s the titanic talent of Ms. Dianne Weist who eventually arrives like a bomb going off. Her pursed-lip performance, with a glaring gaze and acidic tongue, is unabashedly brilliant. Yet at other times, freed from her mask, staring makeup-less into a mirror, we see in the smallest of gestures the most eloquent of performances, an exercise in restraint, technique, and subtlety that only a lifetime of excellence can hone. Despite these luminous takes, the film isn’t simply an exercise in showing off the talents of this troupe. The tale of early-onset diminishment is of course harrowing in and of itself, but as its explored, there’s never a feeling of mawkishness or melodrama. Instead, the matter-of-factness of life taking its awful turns is tackled with a clear-eyed sense of realism, with neither script nor performance losing its way in favor of more maudlin impulses.
While it’s clear that Fern’s contact list benefited his ability to pull off this film’s magic tricks, one should not begrudge prior success leading to this powerful flick. So often films of this ilk do feel like friends doing favors, but this is no mere exercise in self-congratulatory nonsense. Instead, “Closing Night” feels like the opening chapter of a directorial talent, one able to coax such genuine performances from his accomplished cast in a way that is perfectly attenuated and blended, refusing at all times to let one ingredient overpower the whole. The resulting film is a delicious one, a tragedy with enough bleak comedy to keep it real, enough subtlety to keep the more boisterous moments in check, and an excuse to spend some time with stellar performers who nakedly expose these raw emotions in ways that practically leap off the screen. “Closing Night” is terrific, a work free from cynicism, unafraid to show the drama of real life, how the struggles of the past continue to affect the present, and how in the moment of most diminishment and the most tragic of choices, one can still find a way to connect without simply erasing all that has come before.
