Mark Reviews Movies: OUT OF THE BLUE (2022)

Out of the Blue, Quiver Distribution

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 25, 2022

It takes a while for Out of the Blue to arrive at the obvious point of its story. In it, a young man with a mysterious and likely violent past meets a beautiful woman with a problem in need of solving. The problem is a loveless marriage to, as it's soon enough revealed, an abusive husband. If you've seen or even heard of any of the noir films that our protagonist watches alone in his house at night, there's very little surprise as to where this story will be heading sooner or later.

It's later in the particular case of writer/director Neil LaBute's movie, which sees the playwright-turned-filmmaker really try to sell the intense, passionate, and sexually charged romance that emerges from the setup—before it arrives at the inevitable consequences of that relationship. That's not necessarily an incorrect approach to such material, but LaBute seems to be under the belief that crafting pseudo-clever dialogue for his characters is a suitable replacement for developing said characters and establishing the growing depths of this relationship.

Our not-too-mysterious protagonist is Connor (Ray Nicholson), a one-time English major who had to leave his hometown and now lives in small, remote town where only a few people know of his past. Connor works at the local library and frequently runs for exercise and enjoyment. It's on one of those runs that he meets Marilyn (Diane Kruger), a woman a couple decades older than him, on the beach. She comes to this place to get away, swim, read, and relax.

The two talk with the awkwardness—some unintentional miscues and double entendre—of two people who are clearly attracted to each other and don't know how to proceed. There's a lot of that in their subsequent meetings, too, and the shallowness of their interactions, which amounts to this empty verbal foreplay and some physical payoff to the teasing, doesn't help much in how long we have to wait for the real plot to start moving. The hints of it arrive soon, as Marilyn goes to the library to see Connor again (He mentioned his job in their first talk, since she mentioned reading), wears sunglasses that are hiding a bruise he notices, and gives him her phone number. Mostly, though, it's a lot of waiting for the payoff to that clear-cut setup.

LaBute engages in a few stylistic and narrative quirks along the way of the relationship continuing, stopping, becoming physical, pausing again, becoming even more intense, and, finally, arriving at something like a plan for the couple to be together without anything or anyone getting in their way. One of those is the way the transition between each new scene provides a title card announces the passage of time with various degrees of specificity, and beyond being more or less meaningless in the bigger picture, it further downplays the sense of momentum that's already lacking here.

Another is the existence of Kim (Gia Crovatin), Connor's pretty co-worker who's clearly interested in him. Kim is written, costumed, and performed as if she has been dropped into this story from a romantic comedy (The outfits and the phrase "La-di-da" bring one famous example to mind), and in a movie that's already indulging in the predictable conventions and formula of a noir tale, her inclusion as a more conventional and safer romantic alternative (which seems to be the reason for why Kim is styled so specifically to a different movie genre) just adds more formula and, quite transparently, further delays the plot from moving.

As for Jock (Hank Azaria), Connor's probation officer, what can be said of the oddly written character? He inconsistently exists as a threat—manhandling Connor and ruining two men's breakfasts for no reason—or a clam and rational voice of reason, depending entirely on the circumstances of the plot at the moment.

Anyway, Connor and Marilyn flirt and do the other thing. The sex scenes, by the way, aren't particularly sexy, because they're just part of the routine and mostly feel that way—especially the first time Marilyn makes a move in the library basement. As that unfolds, her marriage to the unseen husband (which seems like a surprise in the making, only not to be one at all) becomes more intolerable for the both of them. Something has to happen, and since Marilyn and Connor both have an interest in fictional murder mysteries and stories of fatal conspiracies, something like that could be the answer—as long as they don't mess up matters like the characters in those stories so typically do.

That's something of a clever idea—characters who aware of the kind of story they're in trying not to make the mistakes so common in those stories. LaBute doesn't take advantage of it in Out of the Blue, though, simply because the movie doesn't have the time to do so. Once the plot is finally in motion, it only has room for a couple of surprises (The movie's big one isn't, although the particulars of it are a shock for a lurid reason) but, mostly, more of the routine material that has defined the movie until that point.

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