Queen of Earth

Queen of Earth (2015)

Director: Alex Ross Perry

Cast: Elizabeth Moss, Katherine Waterston, Patrick Fugit



Last night, I watched Queen of Earth. This morning, the most surprising thing about Queen of Earth is how little online commentary I could find on it. For a movie that consciously refuses to offer concrete backstory and context and certainly doesn't offer a definitive climax or ending, there remains a dearth of summary and analysis on up-and-coming indie director Alex Ross Perry's "psychological thriller" about two female friends claustrophobi-sizing in a lake house outside New York City. One of my favorite activities after watching a movie is reading about it the next day, so I was disappointed to find little-to-nothing on this very strange film. And I wasn't about to waste my time perusing IMDB message boards.

So here we are. As Heath Ledger's Joker says: "You can't rely on anyone these days, you got to do everything yourself, DON'T we?"

Either Queen of Earth has very little to say, or a great deal, but either way it presents itself as constructed to evade interpretation. I worry that Elizabeth Moss's highly praised performance is the only thing people will remember this film by. I initially heard of Queen of Earth from publications praising Moss for her role as Catherine, a depressed, possessive, and possibly horror story-esque psychotically dangerous individual. I urge everyone to watch the trailer now. Watch it, and then ask yourself if this movie doesn't seem to be about an (insane) woman, Catherine, threatening and terrorizing her (sane) friend Virginia (Katherine Waterston) in a series of creepy and vitriolic phrases and gestures. Moss is a very excellent actor indeed; she's always been good. But I worry that the actress's intense "madness", displayed by frenetic, bug-eyed outbursts and little-girl giggles, actually inhibits the character of Catherine significantly.  In other words, are we viewing a somewhat reductive portrayal of a female character who is in fact quite nuanced and complex?

Alas, I am jumping ahead. Let's backtrack. For most of its duration, Queen of Earth is all about Catherine, even though its ending contradictorily suggests that both women are main characters. The entire opening scene features an uncut, close-up of Catherine's eye make-up streaked face as she mourns, realistically, as her boyfriend dumps her despite the fact that her father has just recently died. Immediately after this, we are transported to a remote lake house belonging to her close friend Virginia. As the two women make their way from the car to inside the house to Catherine's room, etc., Perry establishes a very obvious distance and distrust in the manner in which they interact with each other, not only through the actresses' brilliant tight-lipped reticence and mad-dogging stares, but also through a deliberately ominous,  Kubrickian one-key piano soundtrack. 

Most importantly, the distrust between Catherine and Virginia is demonstrated by filming them at odd angles in relation to one another. For example, one woman will look in one direction, while another will look in a completely different one, neither looking at the other nor following her gaze (see picture above for a prime example). Or, in a total Bergman Persona rip-off scene (I'll get back to that), the camera hovers over the two women from the top left as they sit in bed, rehashing stories of ex-loves, staring straight ahead the entire time in one, uncut eight minute-long scene. In other scenes, when they do look directly at one another while speaking, it's strange and intense, as if they are overanalyzing every minute detail and phrase with skeptical caution and resentment (as couples are wont to do). 

Adding to this distance and discombobulation, the story flips back and forth in time, and I suppose if Queen of Earth succeeds at anything it's that the director manages to continuously transport his audience back to one year prior, in the same lake house with the same characters looking the same (minus Moss's red lipstick), and not once are these flashbacks confusing. 

What we get from the flashbacks-- and here I am speculating-- is that Catherine used to be a lot happier a year ago most likely because she was still with her boyfriend and her father was still alive. HOWEVER, it's not as if everything was all honky-dory back then; in fact, the flashbacks reveal that the relationship between Catherine and Virginia was just as strained and dysfunctional as it is now, if not worse. Even though Catherine wasn't certifiably depressed back then, she was still a neurotic, uptight mess, indulging in heated, high-school-caliber arguments with Virginia in front of their boyfriends and freaking out when they leave a bunch of beer bottles behind. And I think this is the point: in the past, the presence of her boyfriend and the acknowledgement of her still-living father's success and legacy brought out the worst in Catherine in a different way from how it's brought out in the present, now that she is single and fatherless. 

Oh boy. That sounds a bit sexist doesn't it? Hey, I love calling out sexism in movies as much as the next guy, but I think it would prove counterproductive to dismiss Queen of Earth as some indie NYC hipster filmmaker's warped and male-skewed perspective of female anxiety. I do think it's a wee bit more intelligent than that.

INSTEAD, I'd rather call out Perry for blatantly ripping off Roman Polanski and others and  fooling 92% of critics on Rotten Tomatoes into thinking his movie's most unnerving scenes are entirely his own. Do I have to mention that the rotting salad is the rotting rabbit from Repulsion, serving as a symbol for the day-by-day disintegration of one woman's psyche as she's cooped up in a precarious dwelling unit? Or must I mention the upward-camera POV of a mob of monstrous assholes clawing and grabbing at the protagonist as he/she curls into a ball and screams, like at the end of The Tenant? 

I'm not saying that I'm the only person who has ever seen these movies and therefore the only person to have recognized Perry's source material; A.V Club and Slant Magazine both mention Bergman and Polanski in their reviews. Also, yes, I get it: the aesthetic of the film and opening/closing credits is modeled after these kinds of films from the 60's. What I am saying that where other critics refer to this as an "homage", I prefer to call it like I see it: A lazy cinematic attempt at a gradual, claustrophobic psychological thriller with supposed feminist commentary that is not thrilling at all and has absolutely nothing insightful to say about women whatsoever.

Also, what's the point of having title cards informing us of what day of the week it is, if the story is not progressing towards some inevitable conclusion?

One of the reasons Repulsion was brilliant is that the entire story built up to a "reveal" in the final frame: Catherine Deneuve's psychosis and subsequent murderous acts (that's right, at least there was legitimate murder in Polanski's movie!) was the result of her being sexual abused as a child by an older male figure, shown eerily in a photograph that was in the audience's view the whole time (You see the metaphor here? The audience neglected to acknowledge the obvious truth behind her fear of sex and overall psychosis just as the people in her life refused to acknowledge it).  

Queen of Earth provides no such answer as to why Catherine is the way she is, except for the fact she just is; no surprises, no jolts, no explanation. Here and there, Catherine's feelings of self-worth and delusions are limply attributed to her famous father's success and suicide, but the film refuses to take it one step further; the dead father plot contributes nothing to the character's torment or to the characters' lives in general. In fact, it most likely derives from the filmmaker's own experiences.

In other words, what is the point? Whoever suggested that ambiguous endings in movies are worthwhile clearly didn't know how to write a fucking ending.

That being said, Queen of Earth is worth watching for the hell of it, if only because the dialogue and acting is really quite good. It's not a terrible movie; it's just not worthy of 92% on Rotten.

Two final observations:
1) These women put new meaning to the word frienemy. As in, most depressing frienemies ever! The trick to having a frienemy is to never share living quarters with them, duh.

2) Nothing good ever happens at a lake house. I dare you to list one movie featuring a lake house in which things turn out great.

B-