Matt Spicer (2017)
Matt Spicer’s debut feature, which he co-wrote with David Branson Smith, is slippery, unconvincing and very entertaining. Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza), a young woman living in Pennsylvania, is furious she didn’t get an invitation to the wedding of Charlotte (Meredith Hagner), with whom Ingrid has an unrequited friendship. She crashes the reception and maces the bride in the face. Ingrid emerges from a subsequent spell in a mental hospital to develop a new attachment. Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) is a photographer with a sizeable Instagram following. The look of Taylor and of her life in Los Angeles is, to Ingrid, thoroughly enviable. Although her first online contact with Taylor yields a negligible response, Ingrid is undaunted: she decides to use the $60,000 she inherited from her late mother to subsidise a new life and moves to LA. Ingrid, although she hangs out in places where Taylor likes to hang out, is getting nowhere fast until she comes up with the idea of kidnapping her idol’s dog Rothko – in order to return him to, and thereby ingratiate herself with, Taylor. The plan works and the two become friends – in a more real way, it seems, than Ingrid was friends with Charlotte. Not for long, though: Ingrid’s crazy possessiveness and Taylor’s egocentric inconstancy are a recipe for disaster. Is Ingrid Goes West the tale of a sick individual? Is it a critique of a cyber-epidemic (Instagram was described by the journalist Eleanor Margolis, in a New Statesman piece in June this year, as a ‘cultural pissing contest’)? It’s both, but rarely at the same time. In Nightcrawler (2014), Dan Gilroy dramatised the synergy of a pathological personality and a morbid journalistic practice. Matt Spicer tends to switch focus between Ingrid’s psychological instability and the mad inanity of internet ‘celebritization’. He does so according to whichever of the two will deliver more instant impact – and, often, humour – in taking his film forward.
Social media don’t appear to be the root cause of Ingrid’s mental problems. Her Charlotte obsession developed when she was reeling from the loss of her mother: Ingrid’s essential need, it seems, is to be the most important person in someone’s life rather than in-with-the-in-crowd online. She rents accommodation in Los Angeles from Dan Pinto (O’Shea Jackson Jr), an aspiring screenwriter and Batman enthusiast – ie he’s writing what he hopes will be the screenplay for the next Batman film. Though he finds Ingrid exasperating, Dan is soon attracted to her. When they eventually go on their first date, both reveal the painful losses they’ve suffered in their life. That night, they sleep together. Spicer ignores the implications of Ingrid’s discovery that she matters to Dan for as long as these would get in the way of the plot. Instead, like Ingrid, he uses Dan’s affections to justify his assisting in her bizarre projects, which, of course, dig Ingrid into a deeper hole. Her urge to monopolise isn’t uncontrollable and there’s no suggestion that she desires Taylor physically. She gets along well enough with Taylor’s husband Ezra (Wyatt Russell), an unsuccessful artist. (The only picture he sells is to Ingrid, as part of her Taylor campaign.) When, however, Taylor’s brother – recovering drug addict Nicky (Billy Magnussen) – appears on the scene, he and Ingrid are immediately at daggers drawn. Matt Spicer, well aware of his influences, has Nicky explicitly accuse Ingrid of ‘Single White Female stuff’ but Jennifer Jason Leigh’s antagonist in Barbet Schroeder’s film was a good deal more single-minded.
It’s never clear how big a fraud Taylor is meant to be. Ingrid, once she’s returned Rothko to Taylor, insinuates herself in the latter’s life very easily; they spend plenty of time in each other’s company until Taylor herself starts trying to get in with a high-profile fashion blogger (Pom Klementieff). On the other hand, Taylor’s self-advertisement as a successful photographer presumably isn’t a complete sham: with Ezra making no money at all, it’s Taylor who appears to finance their lifestyle. Matt Spicer’s attempt to suggest that Taylor and Ingrid are essentially alike is half-hearted. Ezra tells Ingrid that Taylor too, when she first came to LA, was desperately friendless but when, in their final confrontation, Ingrid tells her this, Taylor’s refutation seems fair enough: she may be part of a cultural malaise but she’s nothing like the maladaptive Ingrid. The climax to Ingrid Goes West works well because Spicer is able to fuse the protagonist’s fragile state of mind and his satire of internet pathology. Ingrid makes a video – in which she explains that she’s alone, sick of being herself and about to take her own life – and uploads it to Instagram. She wakes in hospital to learn from Dan that her suicide attempt failed because he immediately saw her video and called emergency services. Since then, the video has gone viral, with gazillions of expressions of love and encouragement sent to Ingrid’s hashtag (#iamingrid). All the young actors in the film are good but Aubrey Plaza holds it together – she plays Ingrid with fierce empathy, as well as plenty of comic skill. Elizabeth Olsen’s performance as Taylor can hardly be subtle but it’s a pleasant change to see her in a role where she can be glamorously vivid. O’Shea Jackson Jr is likeable and witty as the long-suffering Dan.
23 November 2017
