Synopsis
Two women retreat to a lake house to get a break from the pressures of the outside world, only to realize how disconnected from each other they have become, allowing their suspicions to bleed into reality.
Queen of Earth
2015 Directed by Alex Ross Perry
Cast
Director
Producers
Elisabeth Moss Joe Swanberg Peter Gilbert Christos V. Konstantakopoulos Alex Ross Perry Adam Piotrowicz Edwin Linker
Writer
Editor
Cinematography
Production Design
Composer
Sound
Costumes
Make-Up
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Alternative Title
Королева Земли
Popular reviews
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A masterfully crafted exercise in unbearable cinematic tension; an increasingly distressing work of psychological horror; an intensely-beautiful-and-at-the-same-time-intensely-grotesque exploration of co-dependence and its consequences; an isolated, slowly-ticking bomb seemingly approaching denotation; and other hyperbolic sentiments about this film that I am quite obviously and ferociously attempting to convince you to watch.
Elisabeth Moss is,
very much indeed,
the Queen of the Earth. -
Part of Hoop-Tober 2015
“What?” “I literally didn’t say anything.” “Exactly.”
“What’s it like, having all the answers all the time to everything?” asks Virginia (Katherine Waterston) of Catherine (Elisabeth Moss), her ostensible best friend, during a summer trip to Virginia’s family’s lake house in upstate New York. It calls to mind a similar statement (for Virginia’s words, though structured syntactically as interrogation, are unmistakably declarative) made to Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) in James L. Brooks’ wonderful romantic comedy-drama Broadcast News: “It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.” Yet the difference in response is illuminating—Jane bemoans that it is awful, confirming her boundless self-confidence but diluting it…
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77/100
I could've found Queen of Earth to be insufferable. From its precious usage of title cards to its droning soundtrack, Alex Ross Perry seems to have his influences and inspirations built up like a chaotic supermarket check-out line. And yet, Queen of Earth mostly transcends any sense of unnatural construction, forming a gorgeously esoteric tale of isolation bursting with acidic horror and soothing calamity.
Both Elisabeth Ross and Katherine Waterston are unforgettable as dueling friends desperately trying to sort through scattered baggage, and Perry's camera captures it all through a hazy mishmash of truth and deception. Visual contortions, a slight tearing of the eyes, and even a quick expression aimed in the general direction of the intended target all twist a typical psychological story into one that reaches further and rips out innards when provoked. It's an extremely unsettling and uncomfortable viewing experience, but I found great truth in its startling sereneness and diabolical resentment.
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Katherine Waterston's failed attempt to get the lights off in her bedroom by throwing a pillow at the light switch is one of the realest things I've ever seen.
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What we want to be alone from most is ourselves, to somehow be relieved of what and who we are, of our accumulated burden, of the karma which composes us, and we would like to decompose, disaggregate, become undone from us, and return to the leaf litter and the soil and the rock prior to that eventuality. Some times we would like others to relieve us of the burden of ourselves, but they cannot. Some times others would like to relieve us of the burden of ourselves, but they cannot. We complicate each other, we get in each other's way, we get in our own way. To want to be alone, to want to get one's way, is an idealized…
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With Queen of Earth, caustic auteur Alex Ross Perry stakes his claim as the most essential voice in the American independent scene at the moment. He is the king of narcissism and disenchantment, fearlessly exposing the neuroses of the privileged to make them a tangible and empathetic presence. Human nature knows no boundaries, it doesn't prejudice against anyone. The claustrophobic and depressive state of this specific motion picture is ingeniously realized by isolating the characters to a place cut off from outside influence, a place of tranquility. At least on the surface it seem that way, but can you really escape your problems? Sure, you can escape from the physical presence of them, yet they linger in the imagination, a…
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At once overwrought and inert, Queen of Earth essentially cancels itself out. Writer-director Alex Ross Perry has made a psychological drama that is both a self-conscious homage and a frustrating dither, one that fails to make use of an amazing actress in the (non) process.
Full review here.
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32/100
Safe to say at this point that I just don't care for Perry's sensibility. This one, to my eyes, is just Random Creepy Affectation: The Movie.
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You click your tongue and you revel in the affairs of others. You are worthless. You don't know anything about me.
PAYBACK, BITCH!
Catherine, who lived in a perfect world with nothing to worry about but the two loves of her life (Father and boyfriend) finds herself at rock bottom when she ends up losing both at once and decides spending time with her friend Virginia, which she was going through a long time ago, and Catherine didn't notice it that summer because she was so busy "living her perfect life," a phrase repeatedly said by Virginia, the thing gets complicated when she comes back in next summer with your unmanageable problems.
The irony comes when Catherine, who was on…