'Black Bear' is Aubrey Plaza's best performance to date | movie review

A young couple’s relationship is thrown into turmoil when an enigmatic filmmaker moves in with them to try and complete her latest film in Black Bear.

With its sharp script, interesting structure, and a watershed performance by Aubrey Plaza, Black Bear is a deliciously entertaining and satirical quasi-thriller romp about what it is to be a creative.

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Black Bear, which premiered in the NEXT section of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, invokes feelings of a cross between a relationship drama like Before Midnight and a meta satire like One Cut of the Dead. And if that combination sounds crazy, it kind of is. Black Bear could have easily felt like a party trick of a film where a mid-movie shift changes everything you know about the film. Still, it manages to be more than a clever gimmick.

While Lawrence Michael Levine’s careful direction and sharp screenplay help, it is Aubrey Plaza’s dynamite performance as protagonist Allison that does a lot of the work to pull the movie off. Allison at first comes off like an alternate version of Plaza herself. She is a writer, director, and actress who escapes to the mountain home of a friend of a friend to get over a bout of writer’s block—and she maintains the same dry deadpan wit that is patently Plaza.

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The homeowners who are hosting Allison, Gabe (Christopher Abbott—also in Possessor at the festival) and Blair (Enemy’s Sarah Gadon), are a long-term couple—important to note that they’re not married—who are expecting a child. They’ve been offering their isolated lake home to creatives hoping to help inspire them, as they are with Allison, a filmmaker trying to complete writing her latest film.

From the start, it’s clear that there is some simmering tension between the trio. Blair and Gabe seem to constantly contradict each other and take subtle jabs that they know sting. At the same time, it’s clear that Gabe is attracted to Allison, which Blair picks up on. It leaves her in the odd position of hosting Allison while trying to steer her boyfriend in the right direction.

The tension that Levine derives is palpable, though something seems off. Things seem maybe a touch too perfect. Or maybe too dramatic? Perhaps it’s that the dialogue is hyper stylized? Or maybe too natural. Eventually the movie answers at least part of the question of what’s going on, but I will spare you the detail because the reveal is all a part of the trick that makes the movie work.

Black Bear is about everything and nothing. Not that it doesn’t have a clear purpose, but because of its experimental structure its allegiances are unclear. There are threads for and against the creative process, relationships, and gender dynamics that could have all easily become overwrought. But because of the way the movie twists to a sharp, satirical tone that is at times uproariously funny you’re never left too deep in dramatic waters. Until the climax.

The only proper way to end this review is with a full paragraph of praise for Aubrey Plaza’s performance which I’ll begin with ARE YOU F#CKING KIDDING ME!? Plaza’s performance is mind-blowing in its complexity. Allison herself is a character that code switches depending on who she’s talking to, but at the same time seems susceptible to manipulation. Or is she? Her thoughts are opaque and oh so transparent at the same time to the point that you can at times see her thinking through how she should come off at any given moment. But when that scene happens, and you’ll know it when you see it, you know exactly what she’s thinking. Give her the damn Oscar.

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Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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Karl Delossantos

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Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.