In a TImes interview, Theda Hammel says, of her comic podcast Nymphowars, "my only priority when doing that show: Don't be boring. Don't be boring. Just don't be boring -- at all costs."
Stress Positions feels like that rule taken to its extreme. From moment to moment, it is not boring. There are brilliant shots and situations and lines throughout. I feel like you could cut a half-dozen totally different great short films from it. But maximize unpredictability and you get noise. By 90 minutes, it never got slow, it never got predictable, but in all the chaos it lost my investment and attention.
If it stayed firmly planted in comedy, I think I'd be fine that most of the characters, despite their very different circumstances, are at their core unpredictable, indistinguishable bundles of bourgeois narcissistic pathology. But it's not quite consistently funny enough for that, and I found myself longing for more emotional range. We seem to be reaching for some theme about control over how we're seen, but because the film can't let any idea or beat breathe before complicating it, we never quite get to anything.
I think I'm also missing some cultural context here that either might make it 100% comedy or help me decode the themes - there's a NYC rich gay dude scene that's being skewered here, and I've orbited enough cousins of that scene to get at least some of the jokes, but it's not really a queer subculture I know. In particular I don't get Klara's (and maybe ultimately Bahlul's) perspective that transition represents an escape - do youth and beauty really have less of a stranglehold over the lives of women than Fire Island bros?
Totally want to see "My Trip to Spain" - I feel from this movie that Theda Hammel could rock something shorter.
Review by callie_jenningsBlockedParentSpoilers2024-05-01T17:07:07Z
In a TImes interview, Theda Hammel says, of her comic podcast Nymphowars, "my only priority when doing that show: Don't be boring. Don't be boring. Just don't be boring -- at all costs."
Stress Positions feels like that rule taken to its extreme. From moment to moment, it is not boring. There are brilliant shots and situations and lines throughout. I feel like you could cut a half-dozen totally different great short films from it. But maximize unpredictability and you get noise. By 90 minutes, it never got slow, it never got predictable, but in all the chaos it lost my investment and attention.
If it stayed firmly planted in comedy, I think I'd be fine that most of the characters, despite their very different circumstances, are at their core unpredictable, indistinguishable bundles of bourgeois narcissistic pathology. But it's not quite consistently funny enough for that, and I found myself longing for more emotional range. We seem to be reaching for some theme about control over how we're seen, but because the film can't let any idea or beat breathe before complicating it, we never quite get to anything.
I think I'm also missing some cultural context here that either might make it 100% comedy or help me decode the themes - there's a NYC rich gay dude scene that's being skewered here, and I've orbited enough cousins of that scene to get at least some of the jokes, but it's not really a queer subculture I know. In particular I don't get Klara's (and maybe ultimately Bahlul's) perspective that transition represents an escape - do youth and beauty really have less of a stranglehold over the lives of women than Fire Island bros?
Totally want to see "My Trip to Spain" - I feel from this movie that Theda Hammel could rock something shorter.