Review: A brilliant turn from Aubrey Plaza in ‘Black Bear’
’Tis the season of great Aubrey Plaza performances, apparently. The “Parks and Recreation” and “Legion” alum has been long overdue for a breakout film role, something fitting of her wide-ranging talent and more imaginative than just relying on her quirky deadpan and eye rolls.
She’s been excellent before as a motivated teen in “The To Do List” and an empathetic social media stalker in “Ingrid Goes West” but the bigger studio comedies have largely failed her. Something finally clicked into place, though, and she has proven that she is on another level. And no, I’m not just talking about her effortlessly cool “Happiest Season” character, a side-player who became a social media favorite simply by existing.
The movie is “ Black Bear,” a meta thriller about moviemaking, creativity and ego from writer-director Lawrence Michael Levine that debuted earlier this year at Sundance and is the kind of indie that can so easily get lost just because it is never going to be an Oscar contender. It also has the misfortune of being enormously tricky to describe coherently or satisfyingly: It essentially becomes a different movie halfway through. But even though it is purposefully disorienting and occasionally a little too heightened, it is never not interesting and keeps you rapt with its captivating performances, revealing dialogue and moody, lo-fi style.
In the first section, Plaza plays Allison, an actor turned filmmaker who has decided to escape to a bed and breakfast in the woods on a lake to work on her next screenplay. Her movies, she says, are the small, unsuccessful ones that no one likes. And she quit acting because she was difficult or not pretty enough or, more likely, some other reason she would rather not admit to herself much less a stranger whose property she’s renting.
The cabin is...