Featuring a powerhouse performance from Elisabeth Moss, writer-director Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth is a tense psychodrama that makes for both admirable and unnerving viewing.
After being unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend while dealing with her father’s recent death, Catherine (Moss) seeks solace in a week away at her friend Virginia’s (Katherine Waterston) lake house. As unresolved tension simmers between the two friends, heightened by the unwanted presence of the boy next door (Patrick Fugit), Perry observes Catherine’s psychological breakdown, neatly structured into daily chapters.
From the moment the film opens on a distraught Elisabeth Moss, tears and mascara streaming down her face, she commands the screen. As Catherine becomes rapidly more erratic, Moss successfully avoids a pulpy performance, instead presenting a detailed depiction of a woman thoroughly broken and slowly descending into madness. She is well supported by Katherine Waterson’s performance as Catherine’s passive aggressive friend, finding a discomforting balance between warm sympathy and a cold controlling nature. Essentially a chamber piece for these two actors, the film’s strongest moments appear in extended monologues from Moss and Waterson.
Utilising flashbacks, Perry counterpoints Catherine’s escape with her previous visit to the vacation house a year earlier, creating an unspoken tension to the friends’ relationship that subtly rises to the surface throughout the film. With fragmented moments from the past and present unpredictably interrupting the main plotline, Perry begins to blur reality and paranoid hallucination, accumulating in a thrilling meltdown scene.
Shot on 16mm, Sean Price Williams’ cinematography is intimate and soft, a juxtaposition from Robert Green’s abrupt editing – a collection of time-changing smash cuts that disorientate the viewer as they try to keep up with Catherine’s deteriorating mind. A discordant piano score (Keegan DeWitt) enhances the eerie tone established by the visuals, establishing a sense of dread that perhaps is not reminiscent of the film’s eventual payoff.
A departure in form from his last feature, Listen Up Philip, Alex Ross Perry has risen above a genre piece to create an atmospheric film that is reminiscent of Bergman’s Persona. While the conclusion may leave some unsatisfied, Queen of Earth proves an impressive showcase for Elisabeth Moss and is sure to be a favourite on the festival and indie circuit.
BY DANIEL COGHLAN
