Alex Ross Perry‘s Listen Up, Phillip was about an angry, insecure writer (Jason Schwartzman) lashing out at almost everyone in his life, his longtime girlfriend Ashley (Elizabeth Moss) in particular. I finally caught up with this bitter black comedy a year or so ago. My six-word review was “wickedly amusing but reeking of toxicity.” It seemed obvious that Perry knows this kind of character like the back of his own hand — an abrasive, obnoxious, self-obsessed dickhead.
Now comes another Perry creation, a self-destructive rocker named Becky Something (Moss again) who’s “struggling with sobriety while trying to recapture the creative inspiration that led her band to success,” etc.
If there’s something slightly interesting and vaguely alluring about a woman character and you, a director-writer, wanted to describe this quality in an olfactory sense, you could call it Her Scent or Her Vibe or Her Aroma-rama…something like that. But Her Smell obviously indicates she’s giving off some kind of stink. If someone or something “smells”, it’s time for a bath or at least a garden hose.
Costarring Cara Delevingne, Dan Stevens. Agyness Deyn, Ashley Benson, Amber Heard, Eric Stoltz, Virginia Madsen, Lindsay Burdge, et. al.
