Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman:
"In Sherrybaby, the emotionally arresting new independent feature written and directed by Laurie Collyer, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a young New Jersey woman who's a recently released convict, a recovering junkie, and — more than that — a totally annoying dim-bulb narcissist. Yet from the opening of the movie, she has you hanging on her every word and gesture. Blond and beaming, she speaks in a slack, dazed little-girl voice — the sound of a burnout looking for the next sensation — that makes her sullen sexuality seem an eruption from within. Sherry believes in her willowy body and not much else. She's a cherry-bomb hellion who never grew up; she wants and wants, and gives too little in return. Yet Maggie Gyllenhaal is such a miracle of an actress that she makes you respond to the innocence of Sherry's desperate, selfish destruction. I was gripped by the way that she holds a cigarette, her two fingers stretched out in a girl's rigid notion of ''maturity,'' and by the way her head dips slightly, with sulky sensuality, like something out of an old Cyndi Lauper video. You may not like the character — you'd be deluded if you did — yet your heart opens up and bleeds for her.
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Gyllenhaal has a great scene in which Sherry embarrasses her family by singing the Bangles' ''Eternal Flame'' at a dinner party, yet what makes it powerful is that we can see that she's been doing this ever since she was a girl, when it was probably charming. Gyllenhaal never lets you forget the damaged child, the baby, under Sherry's jaded facade. The movie ultimately shows you how she got that way, but it never lets her off the hook. Danny Trejo, as the hulking dude who befriends Sherry at a recovery meeting, has a marvelous been-around-the-block tenderness, yet even he can't ''save'' her.
No one but Sherry can, and watching her try, fail, and try again makes for one of the most authentic, and moving, journeys the movies have offered this year."
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2 comments :
Thanks for that. I have no doubts whatsoever about maggie's perfomance in the film. I'm sure it will be on par with and even surpass 'secretary'.
What I do worry about is some of the rumblings that her character is unsympathetic and while I welcome a change from the usual grass-to-riches inner strenght will conquer all rountine,I fear that may dampen the much needed buzz required for this film.
Don't be so worried, kokodee. Maggie's screen presence is so benigne that I trust it can make up for the selfish/gloomy aspects from her character Sherry.
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