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| Elisabeth Moss in Her Smell |
Sometimes the opportunity to watch good actors act is almost the only thing a movie gives us. (That's true, I'm afraid, of a lot of the Meryl Streep oeuvre.) Certainly it's the chief thing the punk-titled Her Smell offers: Elisabeth Moss tearing up the screen as a self-destructive rock star. But we've seen the story before and Alex Ross Perry has nothing novel to give us in his version of it. Moss's Becky Something collapses at the peak of her career, leaving a broken marriage, an infant, and a mountain of lawsuits, including those by her producer, Howard Goodman (Eric Stoltz). She sobers up -- the film doesn't show how -- and retreats into seclusion. But the ever-forgiving Howard persuades her back for a final gig at a concert featuring the many acts he has produced over a 20-year career. Is she strong enough to make it? Her long-suffering bandmates and her ex-husband (Dan Stevens) have forgiven her trespasses, but they still have some doubts about her continued stability. She is something of a head case where it comes to New Agey guidance -- she still, for example, believes in the guru called Ya-Ema (whose real name, someone says, is Alvin), even though he has gone to prison for defrauding her and others. Yet the film has to end with a triumph, and it does. I have no ear for the music in Her Smell, so I can't comment on that other than to say it seemed mediocre, but Moss gives it her all, doing her own singing. But it's her acting we came to see, and that's exceptional.
