The Kind­ness of Strangers – first look review

A city can be a play­ground, a waste­land, a dream fac­to­ry; a place to con­quer, or be devoured by, or just about any­thing beyond or in between. Lone Scher­fig prob­a­bly intend­ed to reach for some of these notes in the sad-sack New York fable The Kind­ness of Strangers, the first film she has writ­ten solo since 2000’s Ital­ian for Begin­ners. But the film nev­er musters the ener­gy or clar­i­ty to get to any of them. This is a flat and vision­less ensem­ble dra­ma, reach­ing to put its arms around the world and clos­ing on air.

As the music swirls and the chop­py nar­ra­tive intro­duces us to dis­parate char­ac­ters strewn around the won­der­land, it seems we’re in for one of those loose­ly inter­lock­ing mul­ti-strand­ed epics of per­son­al strug­gle that came in the wake of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Mag­no­lia, such as Paul Hag­gis’ Crash and Fer­nan­do Meirelles’ 360.

Zoe Kazan plays a Buf­fa­lo house­wife who flees her abu­sive cop hus­band, telling her two young boys they’re going on an adven­ture to dis­cov­er Man­hat­tan, which main­ly con­sists of sleep­ing in their car, for­ag­ing for food or wan­der­ing the pub­lic library; Tahar Rahim is an ex-con who falls into becom­ing a restau­rant man­ag­er for Bill Nighy, a pro­pri­etor who switch­es between Russ­ian and Amer­i­can accents depend­ing on whether he’s per­form­ing for his clien­tele; Jay Baruchel is Rahim’s friend and lawyer, who most­ly stands around look­ing bemused; Caleb Landry Jones plays a men­tal­ly chal­lenged tri­er whose mishaps have got­ten him fired from a mat­tress fac­to­ry and a laun­dry; and Andrea Rise­bor­ough is a mod­ern saint who divides her time between being an ER nurse, a sup­port group leader and a vol­un­teer at a church.

Rather than fol­low the per­son­al dra­mas intense­ly while hint­ing that they’ll con­nect, the film lets all these char­ac­ters meet and seems to set­tle its rhythm into plod­ding aim­less­ness as they do. Some­how – per­haps for no oth­er rea­son than grav­i­ta­tion­al, vibra­tional attrac­tion – they all end up drift­ing in and out of the church, the Russ­ian restau­rant and the sup­port group. Jones is less use­less at every­thing once Rise­bor­ough gives him handy­man chores to do; maybe all he need­ed was some­one to believe in him.

Kazan keeps leav­ing her kids to go miss­ing while she for­ages for food, or avoids her hus­band, who keeps find­ing her and slink­ing into scenes as cool­ly dead-eyed as Robert Patrick was when he played the T‑1000. Riseborough’s accent seems to become more Bronx the more tired she gets, and this is as close as we get to per­son­al flavour. The char­ac­ters don’t have per­son­al­i­ties so much as sit­u­a­tions, and with­in that, the film’s default mode is to show peo­ple sit­ting around look­ing pensive.

Shift­ing around indi­gent­ly can make for pow­er­ful cin­e­ma, whether it’s La Stra­da, The Saint of Fort Wash­ing­ton or Mid­night Cow­boy. Even Home Alone 2 is far more indeli­ble than The Kind­ness of Strangers. Scherfig’s eye is too bland and func­tion­al to imbue her wan­der­ing script with the reach-out-and-touch-some­body ethe­re­al mag­ic that she was pre­sum­ably going for. The most inter­est­ing things that hap­pen to the char­ac­ters – Kazan fight­ing a court case against her abu­sive hus­band, Rahim refur­bish­ing the restau­rant, Rise­bor­ough falling in love – occur either off­screen, in mon­tage, or are referred to in off­hand, mum­bled dialogue.

Any of those avenues might have been a more worth­while way for The Kind­ness of Strangers to spend its 115-minute run­ning time. Last year’s Berlin Film Fes­ti­val open­er was Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, which, like it or not, was a burst of ener­gy. This is some comedown.