There is a wealth of material to mine from mother/daughter narratives. Loving, generation gap stories. Tales of abandonment and neglect. The relationship between mothers and daughters is full of complications and challenges ripe for the screen.
It is the subject Alice Englert takes on in her feature directorial debut, Bad Behaviour. We’ve seen her for years as an actress on screen in films and TV from Beautiful Creatures to Top of the Lake. With her long list of artistic accomplishments in acting and music, it seems somehow natural Englert would choose to move behind the camera and into the driver’s seat. Her years of experience and careful observation have prepared her for a debut that is darkly funny and unsettling in ways that feel all-too-real.
In addition to writing and directing, Englert lends her talents to a listless, slightly weird, lost soul in Dylan, a stuntwoman working on a movie set in New Zealand. Thousands of miles away in Oregon, her mother Lucy (Jennifer Connelly) arrives at a semi-silent wellness retreat run by a guru named Elon (Ben Whishaw). Her retreat is anything but relaxing. Everything feels foreign and silly for Lucy. Her sleep is interrupted nightly by a flickering light with a bad motion sensor.
Lucy’s discomfort only intensifies when she looks around at the rest of her fellow attendees, all of whom seem willing to try to embrace the goofy activities and Elon’s word salad sermons. The most annoying of them is a model/DJ (played with divine comic precision by Dasha Nekrasova). Whenever she has a minute, Lucy sneaks away to an area behind the garbage cans, the only spot on the property with any cell service.
Lucy’s phone calls are to Dylan, wiling away time on the set of a fantasy film with one of the stars. Both women are searching for something. Neither seems quite able to acknowledge the real problem is some fracture between than that never healed properly.
Surrounding both women in their respective locales are a collection of intriguing supporting characters. In addition to Nekrasova, Whishaw is stands out as the supposedly enlightened wellness guru. Elon doesn’t necessarily buy into his own product, but if his guests do, does it matter?
As the first half supplies uneasy laughter and awkwardness, it culminates in a shocking moment that is so unsettling because it is inappropriately cathartic. The scene wouldn’t work as well as it does if not for the skill and charm of Jennifer Connelly. She is the reason we feel a little torn, if not fully on Lucy’s side. It is at this moment Bad Behaviour reaches its crescendo, a sequence that leads directly to what we and our leads have been waiting for, a conversation at least a decade overdue.
In some ways, the two halves of this film don’t quite fit together. There’s a Before the Incident and an After. Though all of it is humorous, cynical and satirical, the After becomes sillier and more blatantly comedic. The exception is a particularly beautiful scene between Connelly and Englert, alone in a hotel room, finally talking. The scene is poignantly written and lovingly performed, a powerful demonstration of how the words we don’t say can sometimes hurt more than the ones we do say.
Bad Behaviour is a witty and insightful story of a mother and a daughter. Though not the story of Englert and her own mother, Oscar-winning director Jane Campion, there is a universality at play that makes even the most outrageous bits ring true. In the age of debate over “nepo babies” and who deserves a seat at Hollywood’s table, Englert makes the case that she has things to say and she will say them well. With this kind of beginning, we can only imagine where she goes from here.
Bad Behaviour premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is seeking distribution.
