Woodshock * ½ / *****
Directed by: Kate Mulleavy & Laura Mulleavy.
Written by: Kate Mulleavy & Laura Mulleavy.
Starring: Kirsten Dunst (Theresa), Joe Cole (Nick), Pilou Asbæk (Keith), Steph DuVall (Ed), Jack Kilmer (Johnny), Susan Traylor (Theresa's Mother), Joel McCoy (Foreman), Michael Pavlicek (Mike).
Woodshock is one of those movies that even after you’ve seen it, you won’t really be able to describe it, or what happens in it. It is a film that tries, very, very hard to operate on some kind of dream logic, but instead, doesn’t seem to have any logic to it at all. The writers/directors – sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, fashion designers turned filmmakers – have some visual skills to be sure. The film looks great, and there are striking images throughout. Sure, much of those feel like pretentious, film school crap – but they wouldn’t be the first debut directors to make that mistake, and it looks fine just the same. But the movie is such a boring slog that eventually you don’t much care how it looks.
The film stars Kristen Dunst as Theresa – a woman we first meet, as she lights up a joint, laced with some sort of liquid, that she then gives her mother. He mother inhales and dies shortly after. This isn’t a murder, but an assisted suicide. The rest of the movie is basically Theresa feeling guilty about her role in this assisted suicide – and some of the other things she does (which, to be fair, she should feel guilty about).
Dunst is a talented actress, who I don’t think filmmakers use quite enough. She has done her best work with Sofia Coppola of course – but Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is another high point, and she’s someone I always look forward to seeing. There is little she can do in Woodshock though to save the film from itself. The film is dour and dull from the outset – and is basically a long slog from there. It doesn’t help that the men in her life are bores – her emotionless boyfriend Nick (Joe Cole), who doesn’t seem to know, or care, about anything going on in the rest of the movie or Keith (Pilou Asbæk), who runs the medical marijuana dispensary Theresa works at – and is also responsible for helping old people, like her mother, to kill themselves. He’s supposed to be a party boy – but his parties seem sad and pathetic – and not in the way the film intends.
The film ends with a violent, climatic bang – something meant to shock the audience, and I guess it is shocking, but only because it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the film – and puts Theresa in a different light than we’ve seen her before. I also don’t know what to make of the final shot – and worse, I’m not sure the filmmakers do either.
The film really does look great at times. I under that the Mulleavy’s wanted their film to operate not like a traditional narrative, but more like a dream. I normally love those film (David Lynch does this better than anyone – but there are lots of examples of this that I love). Here though, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to anything. Worse, the film is just plain dull. I would watch another film by these filmmakers, if only to see if they can match their visual talents to some sort of narrative that works. They really did not do that this time.
