Her Smell – first look review

Between A Star is Born, Vox Lux and Teen Spir­it, female musi­cians have been a recur­ring theme at this year’s Toron­to Film Fes­ti­val. Alex Ross Perry’s con­tri­bu­tion sees Elis­a­beth Moss take cen­tre stage as tal­ent­ed but destruc­tive punk rock star Becky Some­thing. With an eclec­tic cast includ­ing Agy­ness Deyn, Dan Stevens, Cara Delev­ingne and Eric Stoltz, Her Smell is an ener­getic take on star­dom, sis­ter­hood and self-dis­cov­ery. But more than any of that, it’s a chance for Moss to deft­ly turn her hand to a new act­ing challenge.

As the lead singer of riot grrrl band Some­thing She, Becky is unre­li­able, unco­op­er­a­tive, and often unsym­pa­thet­ic. Hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly alien­at­ed her hus­band Dan­ny (Stevens) and young daugh­ter, her reck­less nature under­mines her tal­ent and sees her at odds with her band­mates Marielle and Ali (Deyn and Gayle Rankin) while her man­ag­er Howard (Stoltz) qui­et­ly despairs. With a tour can­celled and new album not forth­com­ing, Becky spends more time drink­ing and fight­ing than per­form­ing and writ­ing, and over the course of five acts, we’re there to wit­ness her seem­ing quest for self-annihilation.

Pink neon lights and the sight of streaked mas­cara and fresh­ly spilled blood con­tribute to the film’s scuzzy charm, cap­tur­ing the chaot­ic world which Becky inhab­its, but the film lives and dies on the pow­er­house per­for­mance that Moss deliv­ers. Flit­ting between irra­tional anger and self-inflict­ed lone­li­ness, she brings some­thing to Some­thing, a mil­lion miles away from her well-known per­for­mances in Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Wide-eyed with a dan­ger­ous grin, we’re intro­duced to Becky as a glit­ter-cov­ered whirl­wind, Moss bounc­ing off her co-stars like a pin­ball as the cam­era fol­lows her every move. Sim­i­lar­ly impres­sive are the per­for­mance scenes – Kee­gan DiWitt’s orig­i­nal score is catchy enough to stand alone from the film, but Moss’ cov­ers of The Only Ones’ ​‘Anoth­er Girl, Anoth­er Plan­et’ and ​‘Heav­en’ by Bryan Adams demon­strate that as well as being a tal­ent­ed actor, she’s a bril­liant singer too.

Although it could prob­a­bly stand to lose 15 min­utes from its run­time (some of the vignettes lose their momen­tum as they mean­der on) this is a soul­ful por­trait of a tal­ent­ed but trou­bled artist, not to men­tion an explo­ration of female friend­ships with­in an indus­try still dom­i­nat­ed by pow­er­ful men.