Fay Grim
Director: Hal Hartley
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 2.0
Ideologically neutral - and more than a little neurotic - Fay Grim (Parker Posey) hunts down her rogue husband Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) overseas - apparently, those Confessions of his are actually coded documents and he isn't full of shit. Posey knows how to play it - her deadpan responses, her constant bewilderment, her desperateness ("I thought you liked me...") - but Hartley lets this one slip away with his obnoxious Dutch angles (the technique draws way too much attention to itself), excessive plotting (which leads the picture to actually start taking itself seriously) and truckload of red herrings. He isn't content until he involves terrorists, assassins and intrigue, yet the real complexity is in the human element of a dense single mother trying to raise a teenage hellion with her poet brother locked away in prison. There's your drama.
