Her Smell

I have to give writer and director Alex Ross Perry credit for one thing in his 2019 film Her Smell--he takes chances. They may not all work, in fact most of them don't, but he doesn't play it safe. This makes the film incredibly self-indulgent, but it's memorable.

There have been so many stories, in film or in books, about the excesses of rock stars that I'm surprised anyone would try another one. This one is about a post-punk female trio, Something She, led by Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss). I think its set in the 1990s, as there are no cell phones to be seen and the music kind of fits that era of girl bands like L7 and Luscious Jackson, and especially Courtney Love.

Moss, who also produces, must have seen this as an opportunity to act up a storm. There are five distinct scenes, like acts in a play, and in three of them she is shot out of a cannon. Presumably on some kind of drug, she mistreats everyone around her.

The first scene is right after a gig, the second in a recording session, when the band is supposed to leave to make way for a new band, and the third is before a gig, when Moss is hours late and ends up trying to stab her drummer with a broken bottle. The fourth and fifth scene are after she is sober, with the last being a reunion concert that is way too pat. I think the film should have ended after scene number four.

Perry's most interesting choices have to do with music. There are a few original songs, and they are good (nothing sinks a movie about a fictional rock band then when their songs stink). But in scene four, Moss's daughter, with whom she has spent little time, asks her to sing a song. Moss plays, in one take, Bryan Adams "We're In Heaven" the whole way through. Ninety-nine out of a hundred directors would have included just a bar or two, but Perry lets the scene play for three plus minutes, and it works.

What doesn't work is that Moss plays bat-shit through the first three scenes. When her bandmates quit, one wonders why it took them so long. She has no redeeming characteristics, she's just a junkie/drunk. Her ex-boyfriend, a DJ (Dan Stevens) has custody of the child, who Moss carries around like a doll. I grew exasperated, much like the other characters. We needed to see what she was like earlier when the band formed, to understand why anyone would cut her any slack.

Her Smell is full of familiar faces that pop up. Eric Stoltz is the record company executive (there doesn't seem to be a manager, which is strange), Virginia Madsen is Moss' mother, who has also lost patience, Amber Heard is a rival singer, and Cara Delevigne is the drummer in the new band, whom Stoltz puts his energy into, believing Something She is finished.

Perry needed a better editing job on this film, as it runs over two hours and could have been much shorter. Moss is certainly a force to be reckoned with, but the first three acts exhibit a lot of acting, not necessarily great acting. It is in the last two acts, when she is sober, that Moss shows a better control over the character.

Her Smell is a long slog, occasionally illuminating, but also bogged down in rock and roll cliches.But I give it a slight thumbs up for its unpredictability.