By Pamela Pollack-Fremd
SAN DIEGO _- Are you stuck in your own reality, or can one ever escape it? That appears to be the burning question in Nancy, a film written and directed by Christina Choe. Nancy, convincingly played by Andrea Rigaborough, is a friendless, unhappy thirty-five-year-old woman. She lives with a demanding mother. She just survives on temp office work. To escape her unhappy environment, Nancy creates fictionalized versions of herself on line. She also writes little stories which she submits, but they are never accepted for publication.
While on line one day, she reads about a couple whose five-year-old daughter disappeared thirty years ago. In her escape mode, she wonders if she could be that daughter. Nancy contacts the couple: the mother is played by J. Smith Cameron and the father is played by Steve Buscemi. A meeting is arranged and the stage is set for heartbreak for all.
The music in the movie is both beautiful and haunting, which is appropriate considering the subject matter. The setting is present-day small-town America. The scenery, especially in the latter half of the movie is quite gorgeous. Despite scrutinizing the closing credits, I am not sure where it was filmed. It may have been New York State because the film was supported by the Governor’s Office of New York. It looked like it could have been upper New York State in the dead of winter…anyway, very beautiful.
This is a very melancholy movie. However, it is kind of interesting to see the lengths that the human mind will go to attempt to improve one’s environment.
Opens at Landmark Ken Cinema on Friday, June 22nd.
*
Pollack-Fremd, a retired ESL instructor, is a freelance writer specializing in the coverage of cinema.