The “actor’s showcase” – much like the “oh, the places you’ll go” dramatic framework that I wrote about in this series’ first volume – is nothing new to the Sundance Film Festival, nor to cinema at large. Just as there were a great many films in this year’s program that followed characters navigating foreign environments, even more can be classified as features hinging on their lead performance(s) for dear life, some too dependent while others afford their stars the chance to revel in the spotlight, to display their chameleonic chops for a broad audience of viewers who might only be familiar with one aspect of their work, perhaps even one performance. It’s as thrilling to watch Rose Byrne, a comedic genius in films like Bridesmaids and Neighbors, transform into a woman whose life rapidly crumbles around her in Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You as it is to see Josh O’Connor go from his scruffy horn-dog tennis pro in Challengers to a subdued, broken farmer looking to rebuild his small world in Max Walker-Silverman’s Rebuilding (much like what the writer-director managed to achieve with Dale Dickey and Wes Studi in 2022’s A Love Song).
To the latter point, it’s even more exciting when one actor takes center stage, yet has an equally-compelling scene partner (or two) in their midst throughout the film in question, a fate that many of Sundance’s brightest stars were blessed with this year. Take Rachel Abigail Holder’s Love, Brooklyn (C+), for instance. A modest drama about adults that fits a similar mold to the André Holland-starring Exhibiting Forgiveness, which premiered at Sundance last year, Love, Brooklyn also stars Holland, though the artist he plays here isn’t working with paint, but toying with words and with hearts. He plays a writer named Roger, one whose deadlines seem to shift on the daily, simply based on how uninspired he’s feeling one afternoon and how horny he happens to be the following night. He toggles between a few different locations, never putting down definitive roots in any of them yet feeling endlessly-enamored by the city in which he’s lived for some time (you get one guess as to which city that is.) Roger can be found staring blankly at his laptop in his own apartment one moment, puttering around a park with his ex Casey (Nicole Beharie) the next, grabbing a coffee with his romantically-conflicted pal Alan (Roy Wood Jr.) a few hours later, only to end up sleeping with Nicole (the excellent DeWanda Wise) to cap off the busy day. That Roger never sleeps over doesn’t necessarily add a layer of complexity to their undefined relationship, but it certainly leaves things open for the fate of every character that appears here. “I want everything, and I want nothing,” Beharie’s Casey drunkenly tells Roger, who remains drawn to her but isn’t willing to admit that his heart ultimately lies somewhere in the void between two flirtationships. Is he keeping the door ajar for both in case one doesn’t work out, giving the other a chance to live on? Is either woman willing to wait out his indecisiveness? Is this idea of wanting everything and wanting nothing, therefore not knowing what one wants at all, really the only thing driving this film’s ambitions?
Holder, working from a script by Paul Zimmerman, may be a bit too indecisive for her picture’s own good, as Love, Brooklyn is almost too true to real life in most of its dialogue-driven set pieces, while its less significant narrative and stylistic choices – the uber-cinematic Brooklyn we see here is damn-near devoid of traffic and people despite every day looking like it has thermostat privileges and has set the outdoor temperature to a balmy 74 degrees – make it abundantly clear that we’re operating in the confines of a movie set. If only those lines were somewhat blurred, much like the relationships the film hinges on. Then at least we’d be compelled to see where things went, whether backwards, sideways, or upside-down. In any case, the trio of Holland, Beharie, and Wise are all aces, both separate and together, with Holland further cementing himself as one of independent cinema’s finest talents and Beharie and Wise continuing to please viewers anytime they appear on screen, the audience immediately becoming aware that what they are about to watch is at least of some merit. If only their presences had stronger, more Brooklyn-appropriate material to work with.
A bit farther upstate – not to mention a few decades back – sits Plainclothes (B-), Carmen Emmi’s directorial debut about an undercover cop who meticulously lures gay men into shopping mall bathrooms, only to apprehend them as soon as they are most vulnerable. Fittingly, it’s when Lucas (Tom Blyth) is really hitting his stride on the job that the proverbial rug is ripped out from under him by Andrew (Russell Tovey), a mysterious, closeted man to whom Lucas is drawn. Taking place in Syracuse, New York well into the 90’s, Plainclothes isn’t quite the Cruising homage it aims to be, but it’s all the better for it, Emmi noting and thus utilizing similar tropes to what the great William Friedkin realized in his 1980 crime drama starring Al Pacino, all while getting experimental along the way. Emmi and his cinematographer Ethan Palmer run the footage gamut here, from digital photography to surveillance footage that seems to have been ripped directly from a shopping center’s security tapes, home videos that position Lucas as a boy who has never accepted himself en route to becoming a man, and the once-updated version of 8mm film, Hi8. This tactic provides Plainclothes with a grainy, claustrophobic air that exists in lock-step with its dramatic tension, which Blyth and Tovey steadily realize as the film’s central illicit affair inches toward catastrophe.
It’s Blyth, in particular, who is awarded the showcase here, expanding on the tortured young man role he’s already once inhabited. His breakout came in 2023’s Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, in which he played a young Coriolanus Snow, the dictator played by Donald Sutherland in the original Jennifer Lawrence-starring quadrilogy. In the surprisingly solid prequel, Blyth went toe-to-toe with and often overshadowed his co-star, Rachel Zegler, by exhibiting a quiet, kind resolve in a character audiences were familiar with as the franchise’s Big Bad, only to give way to the brooding darkness fans of Suzanne Collins’ books and the original four movies expected him to have. In Plainclothes, Blyth’s Lucas is often seen in close-up shots that only slightly overstep the boundaries actors should be afforded when it comes to displaying their character’s internal conflicts, though the battle between Lucas’ duties as a cop and his desires as a human being are never not clear thanks to Blyth’s chameleonic demeanor over the course of the film’s runtime. If Plainclothes is often nothing more than an indie triumph for its star, whose own stardom continues to burgeon, then it’s a resounding success.
The problem with Rashad Frett’s Ricky (C-) is that its ceiling is rarely anything more riveting than Plainclothes’ floor, which might not be a problem if the film’s star wasn’t as excellent and compelling as Stephan James. The actor, best known for his astonishing breakout performance in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, plays Frett’s titular character in a similar fashion to how he played Beale Street’s Fonny, communicating with his eyes, his furrowed brow, and with a mouth that can’t always find the words, yet still speaks louder than any verbiage could. Despite having recently been released from prison, James’ Ricardo “Ricky” Smith is struggling to truly feel as though he’s able to live freely on the outside, a common trope used in films set behind bars or films about those who have recently gotten out. but tasking James with manifesting such emotional baggage is Frett’s true stroke of genius here; Ricky’s focus on recidivism – a convict’s tendency to reoffend – especially drives that home, as Ricky is forced to navigate the tribulations of working with a parole officer and his home life while searching for employment, a difficult balance that James strikes with poise and the evident pain of a wounded soul.
The problems with Ricky have far less to do with James’ lead performance and Sheryl Lee Ralph’s astonishing turn as Joanne, the aforementioned P.O., and more with the film’s telegraphic nature. If Frett is the quarterback here, that would make James his frustrated receiver, as the debut director is prone to point out his target before passing the ball. Sometimes that’s in setting up a painfully obvious [redacted] that alters Ricky’s fate in the immediate future; other times, Frett seems to be… well, fretting, not knowing which subplot to stick to, instead adding dozens and hoping each work in service of the emotional wallop he’s desperate to drive home. To be clear, there certainly is a devastating quality to Ricky. It just happens to be in regards to wasting excellent work from its star and not in the narrative itself, at least not seamlessly.
