Ingrid Goes West | Little White Lies

Ingrid Goes West

17 Nov 2017 / Released: 17 Nov 2017

Woman in straw hat reading a book titled "Joan Didion: The White Album" intently.
Woman in straw hat reading a book titled "Joan Didion: The White Album" intently.
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Anticipation.

A promising scenario nabbed both a valuable Sundance prize and an utterly idiosyncratic leading lady.

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Enjoyment.

Plaza takes some audacious chances even as her film’s own riskiness pays fewer dividends.

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In Retrospect.

An appealing cast gives its all to a highly-charged satire that stays as skin-deep as a selfie. The fuss was all about – and it feels good.

Aubrey Plaza plays a very mod­ern kind of anti­heroine in Matt Spicer’s dark­ly com­ic social media satire.

Ear­ly on in Matt Spicer’s spiky Ingrid Goes West, gold­en-locked Insta­gram influ­encer Tay­lor Sloane (Eliz­a­beth Olsen) posts a pho­to of Joan Didion’s The White Album’. Her cap­tion quotes the first line of Didion’s 1979 essay col­lec­tion: We tell our­selves sto­ries in order to live.”

Although the moment is a fleet­ing part of a larg­er mon­tage that serves as a #nofil­ter intro­duc­tion into Taylor’s care­ful­ly-curat­ed world, this clever co-opt­ing of Didion’s line fit­ting­ly con­nects her words with the nar­ra­tive mak­ing inher­ent in social net­work­ing. Spicer and David Bran­son Smith’s Sun­dance-win­ning script lays forth a vision of social media in which every­one is a cus­to­di­an of their own image, over-doc­u­ment­ing them­selves for out­side consumption.

One of those con­sumers is Ingrid Thor­burn (Aubrey Plaza), an unsta­ble lon­er who has just been released from a men­tal insti­tu­tion after pep­per-spray­ing a woman at her wed­ding. While flip­ping through a lifestyle mag­a­zine, Ingrid dis­cov­ers Tay­lor, the Pla­ton­ic ide­al of Ins­ta-celebs, and is instant­ly smit­ten. Using a recent­ly-acquired inher­i­tance, Ingrid relo­cates to LA, dyes her hair, and gains access into Taylor’s priv­i­leged circle.

Dur­ing a trip to Joshua Tree, Ingrid and Tay­lor snort coke, par­ty at a road­house, and stare at the night sky, their acquain­tance solid­i­fied into a seem­ing­ly star-crossed bond. In these ear­ly chap­ters, Ingrid Goes West remains an enter­tain­ing­ly lived-in par­o­dy that con­tin­u­al­ly runs the risk of being too glib about the cul­ture it lampoons.

Our obses­sion with social media is ripe for mock­ing and even mer­ci­less com­e­dy, but Spicer and Smith reach for only the low­est hang­ing fruit, toss­ing out straight­for­ward gags about superla­tive-sling­ing mil­len­ni­als with their hash­tags, self­ie-tak­ing, and avo­ca­do toast. Noth­ing cuts with the knife-edge sharp­ness of Ingrid, a nervi­ly-con­ceived char­ac­ter whose fun­ny-fright­en­ing per­sona is owed large­ly to Plaza.

With her scowl­ing rac­coon eyes and irony-laden monot­o­ne, Plaza can be a dif­fi­cult actress to cast, but Ingrid is an ide­al venue for her uneasi­ly intim­i­dat­ing aura and tart sen­si­bil­i­ties. She feels in total kin­ship with the trou­bled, ter­ri­to­r­i­al Ingrid, embrac­ing her jagged edges with an id-dri­ven vigour and find­ing depth beneath easy punch­lines. She also sparks, quite spirit­ed­ly, to O’Shea Jack­son Jr, a deeply charm­ing pres­ence as Ingrid’s Bat­man-idol­is­ing landlord.

Their chem­istry becomes a haven as Ingrid veers fur­ther away from the film’s exam­i­na­tion of man­u­fac­tured 21st cen­tu­ry role-play­ing. The intro­duc­tion of Taylor’s livewire broth­er, a repel­lant crea­ture played by Bil­ly Mag­nussen, trans­forms the film into a thriller and entails a grad­ual drift from Olsen. But these emphases on oth­er actors only dimin­ish the acer­bic poten­cy of Spicer and Smith’s cen­tral premise.

Through Plaza, Spicer’s film achieves the high­wire humour it seeks, but its the­mat­ic heft is light and its dual depic­tions of addic­tion and men­tal ill­ness are root­ed in a reac­tionary fin­ger-wag­ging that leaves its anti­heroine more diag­nosed than explored. Ingrid Goes West is a film that knows that peo­ple like Ingrid tell them­selves sto­ries in order to live but doesn’t entire­ly under­stand why, betray­ing a gap in knowl­edge and lived expe­ri­ence that makes for a satire not only lack­ing teeth but imagination.

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