Nancy stars Mandy’s Andrea Riseborough as a thirty-five year old woman who jazzes up her life with vignettes about her life that just lie on the line of whoppers and credible. Unfortunately it creates a dynamic in her life that prevents her from fully engaging with others or having more than transitory ties based on the shelf life of her story. When she begins to believe her own story, it leads to her getting to know a couple that have experienced and grown accustomed to a tremendous loss.
I read about Nancy, and it was playing at a distant theater at infrequent show times, but even if it were playing closer to my home, I probably would not have seen it in theaters. I hesitated before adding it to my queue because the summary felt as if the plot would be predictable, which it was not as sensational as I imagined nor was it a drama that was aiming for a true crime drama, but a portrait of a flawed individual.
I think I came to this film in the wrong frame of mind. On a practical level, I was waiting for the call to pick up my cat after she had a mastectomy so an eighty-five minute movie sounds short until I got the phone call to get her in the middle of the movie, which I started at breakfast time on a weekend, then it becomes, “How am I going to finish this movie when I’m going to be completely distracted and caring for a cat that even the experienced people are thinking, ‘Get her out of here’?” On the other hand, I watch too many movies and live a fairly cynical life so I was attracted to Nancy because I associated it with a documentary called The Imposter, but the film comes from a completely different state of mind. I just kept thinking, “DNA test first.” If I was a character in this movie, it would have been a short film consisting of two phone calls.
Nancy sees its titular character like an adult who never stopped making up stories like a kid. We are not supposed to believe that she is malicious, but as much of a victim of her musings as those who believe her. While I understand that on an intellectual, theoretical level and think that the movie largely succeeds at sticking the landing, I could never suspend disbelief that such a person could credibly exist in the real world and was nothing more than the figment of the filmmaker’s imagination.
I liked that Nancy wasn’t sensational or melodramatic in spite of its subject matter except with respect to the cat, which I did not approve. I’d never put my cat in that situation. I do think that the summary of the movie gives away too much about the narrative since it does not happen until audiences reach the twenty-six minute mark. Waiting for something to happen makes a viewer pay less attention to everything that is happening before whereas if it is a surprise, and a viewer doesn’t see it coming, it creates an additional tension and makes the viewer hold his or her breath until the end.
Nancy is an incredibly sad movie. There are three people whose lives have some how gotten stuck in a very understated way, and all of them want this lie to be true because it would dislodge them from the gear that they are stuck in. How messed up is your life at thirty-five that you can drop everything and it would not make a bit of difference because anything ahead is probably better? At least the couple has an external, objective excuse for their yearning. There is a tacit agreement to extend and enjoy this moment as long as possible.
Nancy is such an odd character because she only injects herself into others’ tragedy even though she has a reservoir of her own to draw from. Her story isn’t Munchausen syndrome by proxy in which she gets attention from others’ suffering. She has experienced loss and tragedy, but she feels as if on its own, it is insufficient, and it does not fully explain the disappointment that she believes that she equates herself as. Despite being a writer, she has no language for the prosaic losses that she has experienced so she borrows from others as if she does not think her story is legitimate. I find that all people are incredibly articulate at pinpointing the moment when he or she felt things went wrong regardless of whether it is true, and the most self-deprecating individual with inclinations towards self-condemnation can list life’s left turns with ease even while withholding the ones that they hold themselves responsible for.
In contrast, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which is based on a real life woman writer, injects her words into people’s successes. Nancy’s closest cinematic soul sister is the titular Ingrid Goes West because of their keen connection to the Internet, their one constant, reliable companion, as if it was water or oxygen, and her incapability of connecting with people organically. Unlike both women, Nancy is still psychologically healthy enough to recognize the difference between right and wrong and genuinely wants to have a normal connection without taking anything away from the person across from her, but does not seem to think that she is worthy of one. While I buy Nancy’s psychological profile, I do not buy its external resulting actions.
The acting is stellar, and the cast is top notch: Hereditary’s Ann Dowd, Boardwalk Empire’s Steve Buscemi and an uncharacteristically subdued performance by John Leguizamo. Riseborough is having a great professional year in leading roles, but because these starring roles are in independent films with moderate, subdued success, it is unlikely that her name or face will be as recognizable as aforementioned supporting cast, especially since she has a tendency to immerse herself fully in the character. Nancy is notable for having an all female crew.
Horror movies don’t stress me out, but movies like Nancy do because second hand embarrassment is excruciating; however I never felt the anticipated tension or anxiety that I expected as the situation unfolded. It isn’t a bad thing, but it has an unfinished or unrealistic quality that prevented me from completely losing myself in the story. As a character study and an acting exercise, the movie succeeds, but lacks a certain je ne sais quoi that should haunt you long after the film ended.