Review: Fay Grim


Parker Posey is the title character who is looking after a young son on her own, after the boy’s father Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) left to go on the lam years ago. The CIA have started to sniff around (in the person of Jeff Goldblum), looking for some important notebooks of Henry’s (apparently containing his confessions), and say they’ll release Fay’s famed author/prison inmate brother (James Urbaniak) in exchange for them. The notebooks apparently also contain hidden spy codes, and that’s when the fit hits the proverbial shans for Fay, as her life is now in danger from all manner of underworld types and the Government sends her to work as an international spy in search of the missing journals! Saffron Burrows plays a mystery woman who looks like she could be a supermodel.

 

My continual head-scratching at the popularity and high regard for indie filmmaker Hal Hartley (the gobsmackingly stupid and pretentious “No Such Thing”) is in full swing with this 2006 follow-up to his “Henry Fool”. I haven’t seen that film, but following the story was hardly my problem here, in fact the plot was relatively coherent. I only watched it because Jeff Goldblum is usually fascinating in anything. I should’ve immediately reminded myself of “Mr. Frost” and “Hideaway”.

 

The film is immediately pretentious and awkwardly acted (Posey in particular is in arch, affected mode as is her wont far too often for my liking), with only the foxy as hell Saffron Burrows (in the only ‘normal’ performance in the film, really) and the aforementioned Goldblum (whose awkwardness is kinda his trademark anyway) coming away unscathed. And sadly, those two are underused.

 

It plays like a parody of an off-off Broadway production mixed with an awful avant-garde film full of stilted and mannered performances. Or maybe it’s like a discarded David Lynch screenplay. I couldn’t work out if the whole thing is a put-on or not, but I do know that I found it extremely off-putting. I kinda feel like at least some of it is meant to be funny, but I found it idiotic, and even childish at times. Even comedies need to have some sense of believability within their own world, but this seemed so arch and pretentious, it’s all affectation and silliness. Oh, and a message to Mr. Hartley and cinematographer Sarah Cawley: If you’re gonna shoot everything at weird angles, learn to frame your fuckin’ shots better, you tool!

 

But the worst thing about this film? The actual plot could’ve made for a fascinating spy thriller. Nah, why do that when we can be all film school arty and quirky and ‘Ain’t I cool?’. No Hal, you’re not. I really don’t know what to make of this film. Oh, I could follow it, I just didn’t get it. Executive Producer Mark Cuban sure as shit didn’t get rich from this one, that’s for sure. The screenplay is by Hartley, who scored, produced, and edited the film as well.

 

Rating: D

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