2020 In Review: Black Bear
The best performance Aubrey Plaza might ever give in her life
AKA: Third wheels never work: The movie!
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On the surface, Black Bear is a well-budgeted student film; an overly ambitious and partly pretentious two-act art piece, each half of the story complementing the other, leaving a dizzying and mystifying ying-yang of overly theatrical relationships, toxic sexuality, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the film industry itself, and of course the psychological weight of artistry, and its blazing impact on being an honest human being in a deceptive world, left only to the devices of an ambiguous, open-ended finale. At the center of Black Bear is Aubrey Plaza, and almost nothing else matters.
By taking place in a lonely, remote lakeside cabin in the woods, Black Bear feels like a stage play and on purpose, focusing on three performers, Blair (Sarah Gadon), Gabe (Christopher Abbott) and Allison (Plaza). Allison, an actress/artist/youbethejudge, comes to visit the cabin as a makeshift AirB&B hosted by couple Gabe and Blair so she can focus on her next screenplay, where the three leads debate film, politics, and women's rights as they slosh around glasses of wine like woke hipsters. Then things get real weird.
Do not disregard writer-director Lawrence Michael Levine's intentionally unexplained script when taking into account just how goddamn good Plaza in the role of Allison. The film is exceptionally mysterious all on its own, even if destined to be one of the most polarizing things of 2020, and while the whole trio is dynamite, this is Plaza's movie from start to finish. Breaking out from cute Goth-girl next door (this is a far reach from April Ludgate), despite what anyone anywhere will ever take away from a cult-film in the making such as Black Bear, Plaza gives an entirely devoted and unexpectedly devious performance that will surely blow the pants off any other worldly expectations folks have of her. Ironically, Plaza herself eventually loses her pants as she succumbs to a third-act meltdown so real that it's easy to forget what else is even going on in the movie (it all eventually gets very meta and easy to dismiss).
None of this is to say that Black Bear isn't a film designed to keep folks scratching their heads and spawning Reddit theories as to what the film's truly about, if anything at all. The fireside cabin and misty lake setting alone gives an eerie yet warm and fuzzy feeling, like an unsuspecting dread lurks around every corner, but at least you've got slipper-socks on. The story's two-act production may very well be the manifestation of two drafts of Allison's screenplay, while the appearances of any black bears may represent Allison's writer's block. The whole thing might just be an ambiguous art piece left up to the audience's interpretation. Maybe it's all just a showcase for Plaza and has no meaning at all (It's really up to us to decide for ourselves).
Look, if nothing else, if not for Aubrey, then at least the film is partly a love letter to the film industry itself, so cinephiles should be able to snack on that. In the end, Black Bear is easily one of the most ambitious pictures of 2020, even if the whole thing is way too artsy, super cryptic, and leading us to be unable to trust anybody, even though we of course want to trust Plaza in a dark and dreamy Bedazzled kinda way. If that's the case, maybe Plaza is the devil?
Don't speculate too hard.
Grade: B+
