Jennifer Connelly delivers a tour de force performance in Bad Behaviour, the directorial debut of actress Alice Englert. Connelly plays Lucy, a former child star seeking renewal at a coastal Oregon retreat led by spiritual guide Elon, portrayed vibrantly by Ben Whishaw. Meanwhile, Lucy’s daughter Dylan, played by Englert herself, pursues stunt work on a New Zealand film set.
Through the cutting between their journeys, Englert explores the intricate ties binding mother and daughter. Lucy remains embittered by past failures and the daughter she feels she never understood. Dylan longs to break free of her mother’s shadow and prove herself as a tough action performer. Distanced geographically, their bond exists in a state of tension.
The film adopts shifting tones to examine this dynamic from various angles. The retreat scenes satirize the wellness industry with razor-sharp humor while hinting at darker truths beneath Lucy’s prickly surface.
When a shocking incident interrupts Dylan’s shoot, the narrative takes a dramatic turn. As mother and daughter unite in Oregon, their raw confrontation of past wounds yields insight into why trauma has kept them apart. By threading between light and dark, Englert peels back layers of family ties that transcend what’s on the surface.
The Mother-Daughter Divide
We’re introduced to Jennifer Connelly’s character Lucy as she embarks on a “semi-silent retreat” in Oregon, informing her daughter Dylan over a scratchy phone call. Dylan, played by writer-director Alice Englert, is wrapped up in her own world as a stunt performer in New Zealand. The strained relationship between the two women forms the heart of this story.
At the retreat, Lucy struggles to find what she’s looking for. Englert creates an amusing send-up of the new-age self-help movement through the retreat’s guise leader, Elon Bello, played with subtle eccentricity by Ben Whishaw. Though he offers platitudes and nonsensical instructions, some attendees hang on to his every word. Lucy, however, remains skeptical and irritated. Her frustration grows with the arrival of a self-obsessed young model, Beverly, who easily slides into Elon’s favor.
Through conversations and a revealing exercise, we learn of Lucy’s painful past in the spotlight as a child star. Connelly digs deep to portray a woman carrying resentment but still longing for understanding. As tensions rise, a shocking eruption spins the story into new territory. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, Dylan experiences her own challenges as a daring stunt performer pushing her limits.
When tragedy strikes both women, their stories collide. In these later scenes, the depth of feeling Connelly and Englert bring to their raw, emotional conversations really shines. Old wounds are opened, but perhaps some healing might also take place between this damaged mother and daughter as they learn to see one another with clearer eyes. By peeling back layers of hurt, Englert finds the humanity in these flawed but in-depth characters on their separate yet parallel journeys of self-discovery.
Filmmaking From the Ground Up
Alice Englert’s feature debut shows a budding talent behind the camera. As director, she crafts multidimensional characters and builds suspense through visual storytelling. Englert lets scenes unfold with long takes, pulling viewers deep inside strained conversations. She finds meaning in fleeting gestures and unspoken tensions.
Cinematographer Matt Henley lends the film a sense of place. In wide shots, he captures the verdant landscapes where scenes are set, from a lush Oregon retreat to the rugged terrain of a New Zealand film shoot. Yet Henley’s camera prowls a keen eye for character detail. Close-ups reveal the fissures underneath surface conversations, exposing rising anxieties or fleeting vulnerabilities. Together with production designer Toby Hill, Henley immerses viewers in vignettes that feel lived-in and authentic.
Editor Simon Price plays a crucial role in bridging the film’s split locales into a cohesive narrative. Scene transitions flow naturally while also quickening the pulse. Through adept cutting, Price ratchets up unease during the explosive climax. In calmer moments, Price’s pacing unveils new shadings in relationships.
Flashbacks spliced into the present shed light on the roots of resentment between mother and daughter. Step by creative step, the team brings Englert’s vision to life, showing why her cinematic voice will be one to watch in the coming years. Effortless visual storytelling is part filmmaking talent and part practice on the ground. Here, that experience is just beginning, with more depth yet to uncover.
Mother-Daughter Dynamics at a Crossroads
Lucy’s journey to find inner peace exposes unseen wounds from her past. Jennifer Connelly brings Lucy to life in all her complexity, a character holding back a sea of emotions. We see glimpses of the gifted actor she once was, now replaced by walls built tall through life’s hardships.
Her strained relationship with daughter Dylan hints at difficulties left unsolved. Parenting rarely comes with a guidebook, and though their love remains, scars linger beneath unresolved conflicts. In sending Dylan away for work, Lucy perhaps hoped distance would heal old pains, yet distance limits understanding.
At the retreat, Lucy searches for answers among new faces, yet struggles to find herself in a sea of platitudes. When a superficial guest arrives solely for status, Lucy’s anger arises from recognizing what she escaped in her past career. Seeking acceptance, she quotes the guru, yet hopes remain just beyond reach for one bearing deep private wounds.
As tensions boil, realities come to light in a shocking act, exposing trauma’s depths. Dylan’s arrival allows their story to intersect, sparking transitions as buried emotions surface through raw conversations. Though stumbling at first, their journey sees Lucy and Dylan start to rebuild foundations, accepting mistakes while working to learn from the lessons of the past.
Ultimately, the film shows the difficulties and possibilities of repairing family bonds shaken by life experience. Despite struggles along the way, its conclusion conveys hope that through openness and understanding and with care shown to inner worlds bearing scars unseen, even fractured relationships may find healing given time and effort from all involved. With empathy and compassion, the past need not hold power over the present and future.
Outshining Others
Jennifer Connelly steals the show in Bad Behaviour with a tour de force performance as the bitter Lucy. Connelly immerses herself completely in this difficult role, laying bare Lucy’s many layers with vulnerable and unfiltered emotion. We see Lucy’s pain, regret, and defensiveness in sharp relief through Connelly’s powerful but precise delivery.
Whether spitting biting sarcasm or breaking down into raw anguish, Connelly never falters, bringing humanity even to Lucy’s most unflattering moments. She holds nothing back to bring this troubled character to life. It’s a gripping turn that proves once again why Connelly is considered among the finest of her generation.
While surrounded by such a towering lead performance, newcomer Alice Englert more than holds her own in her breakthrough leading role as Lucy’s daughter Dylan. Englert fearlessly embraces Dylan’s complexity, simultaneously projecting her strength and vulnerability.
She matches Connelly scene for scene with a nuanced portrayal that fleshes out Dylan as a fully formed person in her own right. Englert proves herself to be a talent to watch. Between them, Connelly and Englert craft an achingly authentic mother-daughter relationship at the heart of the film.
As the dubious spiritual guru at the center of it all, Ben Whishaw is a perfect comedic foil. Whishaw gleefully skewers Elon Bello with a sense of playful absurdism, finding humor in even the character’s most cringe-worthy platitudes. With sublte flair and not a small amount of charm, he makes Bello thoroughly entertaining, despite his dubious philosophy. Whishaw brings just the right touch of bemused charisma to lighten moments where the film threatens to grow too heavy. His lively work is a true delight.
Together, Connelly, Englert, and Whishaw form an impeccable leading trio that elevates Bad Behaviour through their impressive performances. They prove that even when a film stumbles, strong acting can still shine through.
Reconnecting on Uneven Ground
While Jennifer Connelly gives a tour de force performance as the prickly yet vulnerable Lucy, the film spreading her storyline between two settings proves an uneven approach. In Oregon, Lucy attends a retreat led by the enigmatic Elon, where she connects with pain from her past and, oddly, with model Beverly. Connelly immerses us in Lucy’s swirl of emotions, delivering witty quips through clenched teeth while also laying bare her wounds. When tragedy strikes, it lands with sincerity.
Meanwhile, in New Zealand, Dylan spends less revealing time on a film set. We learn little of her beyond flirting and daredevil stunts, leaving her psychology opaque. Her experiences entertain in the moment yet fail to resonate within the larger narrative. With focus split between the vivid yet slim plot in Oregon and the bustling yet shallow one overseas, the film struggles to find harmony in its dual perspective.
When mother and daughter finally unite stateside, their reconnection arrives burdened with uneven groundwork. While Connelly and Englert convincingly work through strained dialogue, the sudden shift to earnest heart-to-heart feels disjointed given the short shrift to Dylan earlier. With Lucy deeply explored yet Dylan largely superficial, gleaning their relationship’s complex truths proves challenging.
Potential existed to use the framed separation creatively, but splitting attention diluted both stories’ power. Had the script invested equal depth on either side, their intersection might resonate more profoundly. As is, only Connelly’s forceful work keeps us tethered through a journey of fits and starts. With tighter editing and scripting, this raw material could have realized its emotional force on stronger foundations.
Mother and Daughter Tumult
“Bad Behaviour” examines a fraught relationship between Jennifer Connelly’s Lucy and her stuntwoman daughter Dylan, played by director Alice Englert. Lucy grapples with past trauma at a New Age retreat led by the mysterious Elon, while Dylan faces her own troubles on a film set abroad. The film dissects expectations of motherhood through these divided storylines.
Connelly delivers a tour de force as the emotionally worn Lucy. She taps into a well of pain beneath Lucy’s prickly surface with raw vulnerability. Englert shows promise in writing such a complicated central character. Unfortunately, less attention is given to Dylan’s storyline, which distracts from developing their relationship’s core themes.
When the film unites mother and daughter for honest talks late in the game, it hints at powerful drama still within Englert’s grasp. But rushed revelations overwhelm the meaningful groundwork laid earlier. Not all narrative strands tie together cohesively in the end.
While “Bad Behaviour” takes on challenging subjects, its hand occasionally wanders as it searches for the true North. With experience, Englert could wrangle complex material into a tighter, more impactful whole. For a directorial debut, she demonstrates courage in tackling fraught topics and eliciting superb performances. With further refinement of craft, Englert has the potential to elegantly handle the messiness of the human condition.
The Review
Bad Behaviour
"Bad Behaviour" shows flashes of poignancy but ultimately spreads its ambitions too thin. Director Alice Englert takes on a thoughtful exploration of troubled relationships, yet her uneven hand struggles at times with the story's sprawling elements. Still, Englert demonstrates a willingness to wrestle with thorny issues, and she elicits a powerfully raw leading performance from Jennifer Connelly. While the final product remains somewhat scattered, Englert exhibits signs of emerging talent that continued refinement could help flourish.
PROS
- Complex central performance from Jennifer Connelly
- Ambitious themes of mother-daughter relationships and trauma
- Director Englert shows promise in tackling challenging issues.
CONS
- The story splits focus too thinly between plotlines.
- Dylan's storyline lacks depth.
- Final revelations feel rushed without adequate buildup.
- Narrative strands don't fully come together.
