The title characer in Chris Rock’s sure-footed fourth feature as director, Misty Green, is having a rough week. An actress still best known for a TV series that ended years back, she’s about to be evicted, her bipolar brother is fresh out of a psych ward and in need of both emotional and financial support, a pimpy former colleague dangles a lucrative sex-work gig, and while her undeniable gifts might very well help her book an acting job, the many axes she has to grind in the entertainment industry keep getting in the way.
In a star-making performance, Rosalind Eleazar — best known as the tough MI5 operative grieving for her partner on Slow Horses — bites into this gift of a role with grit, tenacity and zero-fucks-given scrappiness. It’s a revelatory turn in a sensitively observed drama that depicts Los Angeles as both a shimmering beacon of fame and success and a soul-sucking grind of constant rejection, where disparities of race, class and gender are as much an obstacle as that casting director who seems to hate you. Following its premieres at the Toronto and New York film festivals, A24 will release the movie Oct. 9.
Misty Green
The Bottom Line
Simultaneously breezy and steeped in melancholy.
