Hot take: Nancy

‘Nancy’ is a psychological thriller about a woman who lives out her life vicariously. In a dead-end job with an ill mother, you wouldn’t judge this woman for inventing vacations she’s never been on. But it’s when her lies start getting her into trouble that it surfaces how damaged she really is.

Director Christina Choe starts out this promising tale with verve and bite, but can’t seem to pull the narrative strands together as the film chugs along. Andrea Riseborough’s performance as the protagonist—a pathological liar who is just short of a psychopath—is quite the tour de force: she uses her remarkably mobile face to create opacity, with a wide-eyed, twitchy quality that gets under your skin. The haunting choral soundtrack starts off well enough, but when it picks up to a plot line that refuses to go anywhere the result is frustration.

Open-ended narratives are fine, but when there is so much to sink into in terms of themes (loneliness, the perverse effects of the internet, mother-daughter animosity, the nature of family) you wish the filmmaker hadn’t chosen to just skim the surface. This is an intriguing premise that isn’t fully executed and definitely leaves you wanting more.

Genre: Drama, Mystery

Language: English Runtime: 1h 25min Year of release: 2018 Streaming Platform: N/A

Hot take is a series in which I offer my first impressions of films from India and around the world.