Black Bear
Captivatingly brilliant, funny and anxiety inducing, Black Bear is a nuanced look at how fiction and reality often get blurred. Aubrey Plaza is just incredible and gives incredible performances in both halves of the film: playing a role she’s grown accustom too in the first half, with the girl who’s drawn back, plays their cards close to their chest and doesn’t reveal who they truly are, making her quirky and different. “I’ve been lying since the second I got here”. Then in the second half playing this tortured actress with her husband playing mind games with her to simply get a good take, much like how Kubrick treated Shelly Duvall in the Shining. She plays both roles with such control and ease it’s delightful to watch. To see how she plays off of both Christopher Abott and Sarah Gadon, who are both also magnetic in the film, is a piece of art, the glances and looks, the subtitles in her body language, the connection you feel between the characters feels real and it’s thanks to the wonderful performances.
Technically the film’s great too with the cinematography, and the way the film is shot being so intimate adding to the sense of dread and anxiety that builds throughout the film. This can also be attributed to the uneasy score that plays throughout, making awkward moments feel ten times worse than they should. The writing is also so sharp and witty throughout that it manages to blend the lines between comedy and horror so easily.
The film is left completely often to interpretation so I’m going to give two ways I see this film. spoilers
Allison is writing her script for her next film at the cabin and each part of the movie is a different version of the script she has decided to write. Each part of the movie ends very similarly, converging on the same point; a husband cheating on a wife. Then a black bear appears and that part of the movie stops. This signifies that Alison’s script is drawing too much from a real life event that happened to her, with both parts being similar it could be because Alison is writing from a place she knows, and when the black bear shows up this symbolises her throwing away that version of the script and starts to write a new one.
The second part of the film is what happened to Allison and to get back at her husband she decides to write a version of the story and make a film where she plays the person who turns up at the cabin. This could be why the dialogue feels more exaggerated in the first half of the film and things feel a bit more manufactured than they do in the second half, as we see the film set not the film. Allison in the first half is also characterised as this mystery, an enigma, something that people desire and this could be because that’s how she saw Blair in the second half.
The film is so layered though and the fact that it can be interpreted in different ways adds to the idea of blurring reality and fiction which is fantastic