In an update to last night’s post about how Sundance ’18 so far feels inconsequential and weak-tea-ish (“Sluggish, Listless, Agenda-Driven“), I said that Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here (which I saw late last night) is easily the strongest film — half narrative, half fever-dream — I’ve seen so far in Park City, hands down.
“It’s bloody and gooey, bothered and nihilistic, but it’s so beautifully shot and unto itself, so self-aware and finely controlled — an arthouse rendering of a Taken-style flick.”
So even though it’s not so much a Sundance ’18 film as a Cannes ’17 hangover and apart from the three brilliantly conventional Sundance docs that I’ve admired so far (Studio 54, Jane Fonda in Five Acts, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind), the Ramsay is far and away the strongest thing I’ve seen since last Thursday — the only Sundance ’18 film that has been applauded as the closing credits begin, the only one that has found the kind of acclaim that Call Me By Your Name and The Big Sick did last year.
It’s so good I wasn’t even bothered by Joaquin Phoenix‘s dad bod.
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