Mark Reviews Movies: BLACK BEAR

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 3, 2020

Writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine presents a pair of variations on the destruction of a relationship in Black Bear. We keep waiting for these two vignettes to come together in some meaningful way, but Levine seems mostly concerned with tying together the stories' superficial elements—arguments, flirtations, suspicions, an affair, "difficult" women, that eponymous ursine threat. It's intriguing and performed well, but the movie leaves us with too many questions and not nearly enough answers.

It also doesn't help that the second tale, which offers dual meta-levels of commentary on this broader story, is much funnier, more complicated, and more involving than the first. Both of them revolve around a trio of characters. In both, the characters' names remain the same, but their jobs, roles, and relationships are changed around from one to the other.

At the core of the entire movie is Allison (Aubrey Plaza), who's a struggling actor-turned-filmmaker in the first, an actress on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the second, and a mystery figure—sitting on a pier and scribbling story ideas in her notebook—before, between, and after the presentation of each tale.

In a way, the real focus, then, is the shared setting: a cabin in the woods, where each version of Allison—the scribbler, the filmmaker, the actor—is staying and working. In the first variation, she, in filmmaker mode, arrives at the cabin to be greeted by Gabe (Christopher Abbott), whose family has owned the cabin for decades. He and his pregnant wife Blair (Sarah Gadon) have started calling it home, after failing to do much career-wise in the city, and renting space for artists to find inspiration.

There are a lot of details here, but there simply isn't much to say about this first section. Gabe and Blair begin with minor disagreements, constant contradictions, and a whole lot of bickering.

Gabe insists he's still a musician and still, technically, a professional, because it's not exactly a job that a person falls out of and he's still receiving royalties for songs he wrote. Blair notes that he hasn't had a gig in a long time, and as for those royalties, the last check paid a matter of cents. Blair points out to their guest that her husband is something of an anti-feminist male chauvinist, but Gabe argues that, while he believes the disintegration of traditional gender roles has slowly ruined society, he's not actually championing that position.

Blair becomes jealous of Allison, asking Gabe if he finds their visitor attractive. When he says that she is attractive by way of an objective standard, the wife lashes out, suggesting that Allison's private parts probably smell like spider feces.

Allison, who is either naïve or just playing the part, watches and overhears all of the arguing, and the story climaxes (although a couple of characters don't get to) and ends just about as we'd expect. The bear shows up exactly where Allison, the mysterious writer, says it will, although we've forgotten the punch line by that point, what with all the bickering and yelling.

The second section flips matters significantly. Allison becomes an actor and the wife of Gabe, who's now a filmmaker working on a movie about situation similar to the one in the first segment. Blair is an actress, playing a mysterious and possibly flirtatious visitor to a remote cabin, owned by Allison's character and Gabe's fictional counterpart (played by Alexander Koch) in the movie the group is shooting.

Meanwhile, Gabe and Blair are playing a game of making Allison believe they're having an affair. Gabe think it'll help Allison's performance. From the longing stares and extra attention she pays the director, we get the sense that Blair wants the façade to become reality.

This section is both disquieting, for the easy way Gabe psychologically abuses his wife for the sake of his art, and quite funny, for all of the attention Levine shows for the running of the production (Mishaps, like repeated coffee spills, abound, and a poor assistant director, played by Paola Lázaro, has to deal with the drama, while also contending with gastrointestinal distress). If the first tale plays a relationship as a disaster in the making with one note, this one is intentionally playing with tone (the juxtaposition of abuse and screwball comedy) and on multiple levels—adjusting the dynamics of the first sequence, assessing the interplay of real life and art, commenting upon the hollow nature of the first tale by making it the backdrop for the behind-the-scenes drama.

While the two segments are pretty disparate in terms of quality and ambition, their merging does give the lead actors a chance to show some range. Abbott, as the hapless musician and the manipulative director, and Gadon, as the harpy of a wife and the coquettish ingénue, are fine here, but Plaza really stands out, especially as the actor version of Allison. That character could have been a cliché, but Plaza taps into a sense of genuine pain beneath the drunken outbursts.

How does the whole of Black Bear add up, though? There's no simple equation, which is admirable (The scribbling Allison does seem like an easy out for Levine to attach some meaning, as shallow as that would be, to what's happening), but ultimately, the movie feels like an experiment in mood and variation, unsure of its purpose.

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