SHIRLEY | FILM REVIEW
Dir: Josephine Decker (15, 107 mins)
Author Shirley Jackson, the mind behind The Haunting Of Hill House, gets an experimental biopic reflecting her life via director Josephine Decker and actor Elisabeth Moss. Not conforming entirely to a coherent narrative, Shirley provides a snapshot into Jackson’s life and the writer’s process.
Odessa Young and Logan Lermer play Rose and Frank Nesmer, a young couple who are housed with Jackson and her wayward, flamboyant professor husband Stanley Hyman, played by Michael Stuhlbarg. Frank settles in as Stanley’s helper, with academic ambitions of his own; Rose ends up becoming Shirley’s friend, after various manipulations and slights, as the latter struggles to write her new book. Stanley is a philanderer, which Jackson apparently accepts as she yo-yos in moods – from morose and depressed, to hyper, to bitter and vindictive.
It’s a warts-and-all performance, Moss and director Decker capturing the uneasy, dreamlike quality that is prevalent in Shirley Jackson’s books. Her new guests fall under the spell of this eccentric, bitter couple and end up helping around the house – Rose becomes Shirley’s confidante and researcher, even inspiring the central character in her latest book as her writer’s block lifts. All the relationships are toxic in one way or another: husbands cheat on wives, sapphic seduction occurs, and snobbishness over the ability to create all combine in a whirligig of imagery and disconnected scenes that need work to fully grasp.
The hand-held camera restlessly spins around all of the characters, adding to the disjointed quality of the film; performances retain sympathy for each character, even as they mistreat each other for sado-masochistic reasons. Shirley still wants her husband’s approval for her work despite his treatment of her, while Rose finds herself neglected by her own husband, struggling to make sense of her place in the world but offering friendship to Shirley with complicated results.
Shirley offers no easy linear reading and is restless itself, with its convoluted, occasionally self-indulgent and frustrating twists and turns. A film to admire and investigate rather than enjoy.
On DVD and Blu-ray from Mon 4 Jan
words KEIRON SELF