Nancy

This film tells the story of a woman who thinks she was kidnapped when she was a child.

Though the film seems to be about Nancy, I think it really is about the couple with the missing child. They go through emotional rollercoasters every time when someone claims to have information about their missing child. I particularly like the fact that the result of the DNA test is implied and not explicit. I feel rather sad about how the couple react afterwards. There are three speeches by the her mother which indicates the result of the DNA test : in the snow just before the hunting accident, during dinner and when Nancy is interrupted from saying singing. It is heartbreaking to see that the mother would rather settle for the present, than have another dashed hope. I think this is an engaging and heartbreaking story.

The acting is spot-on, but this quiet film leaves much to be desired. The word anticlimax comes to mind.

Other reviewers describe this as a sad film, some going as far as to label it "misery porn." I could have accepted some misery porn. But once you've seen The Swerve starring the Incomparable Azura Skye, the bar for something to be called misery porn becomes so much higher than Nancy reaches. Nancy is far from a feel-good film, but it's also a long way from the opposite thereof. It is sad, and quiet, and I expect to be forgetting it within days.

For some bizarre reason, Prime classified this as a suspense/horror. This description is reinforced by the movie thumbnail depicting the main character as a sort of Jekyll/Hyde split personality. This was the reason I decided to watch it.

This movie is a quiet drama about lonliness and desperation. The titular character lives in a drab small town with an ailing, unthankful and abrasive mother that she is forced to care for. She escapes this misery via social media which leads her to create real-world vicarious experiences to try to connect emotionally with outside people.

There's no action... no sinister motives... no dramatic music... no shouted dialogue... no histrionics... Every character we meet in this movie is hurting inside and trying to relieve that pain via human connection.

There a couple of recognizable actors, but the main actress Andrea Riseborough -- whom I'd never heard of -- is the surprise. IMDB tells me she is an English actress(!) who has been nominated for an Oscar. Though she rarely talks above a murmur and has little to do physically, she effectively conveys the bleakness of her character's unhappy existence.

I enjoyed it because I've reached an age where I can relate in some way to each person in the movie. If you can't relate to it, consider yourself lucky.

It's the emotional ambiguity of the final scene that has me wrestling with a rating for this movie. Depending on your dispostion you'll find it either cynical or uplifting.

The beginning of the movie was absorbingly unhurried, drawing you into the claustrophobic confines of antiheroine Nancy's (Andrea Riseborough) white bread world.

We witness her dysfunctional co-dependency with undemonstrative mother Betty (Ann Dowd, even dourer than in Handmaid). A poor excuse for a parent, she is the antonym of empowering of her offspring, discouraging downtrodden Nancy from trying, convinced she'll never succeed.

Riseborough impressively blends vulnerability and an innate dishonesty as this lost child-woman floundering on the outskirts of society cooking up interesting life experiences to swap like recipes in work lunch breaks, in an effort to convince everybody else that she's just like them.

When she wishful thinks herself the child kidnapped from dream parents Ellen (J. Smith-Cameron) and (Steve Buscemi) as a five-year-old, you cross your fingers and pray she's finally found where she belongs.

Ellen for me was the revelation in the piece, a picture of heartbreaking hope and desperate desire that this pretender's story prove true. The bond they forge is beautiful and visibly enriches them both. Smith-Cameron's face, betraying all her emotions, and her developing unconditional love for this would-be daughter reduce me to tears. Paul Raeburn's music helps to destroy me.

The film is full of ambiguities that intrigue rather than frustrate. Not much happens, in fact but we're allowed to watch a family drama play out and a soul adrift's quest for a safe mooring.

Interesting debut with strong performances and a compelling tale.

This could have gone down a darker, criminal route but wisely doesn't. It stays downbeat, and oddly touching.