A Woman, A Part

A Woman, A Part

Elisabeth Subrin, a media artist here presents her first feature film as both writer and director. The story revolves around the predicament of modern day female actors. Anna played by Maggie Siff is a successful television actor who throws scripts into swimming pools and floats on them because she is burnt out. She is also dealing with Ritalin addiction and an autoimmune disease.

Anna does what could be considered quite drastic for someone whose agent had told her to take “a real break”; she goes back to her New York City roots, dropping in on friends and lovers from the theater scene when she was “a scrappy little fucker,” as one of them remembers. “It seems like you’ve got some unfinished business,” observes the rando beardo she makes the mistake of sleeping with a little more than halfway through the movie.

Isaac (John Ortiz) and Kate (Cara Seymour), two old buddies still struggling or at least: in Kate’s case, not (she says she’s given up acting); in Anna’s case, thinking that maybe she’s not an actor anymore; in Isaac’s case, still being the kind of committed boho dude whose marital arguments contain words like “authenticity” are still doing whatever dance they were doing with each other decades ago, which means Anna falls right back into it without missing a step and eats shit all over again.

A group of friends in 1990s New York theatre; one becomes famous star rich gets revealed at party where drugs are done, feelings are hurt; etc., etc.: Isaac has written a script about this very thing that he’s about to read aloud to his friends at said party; Anna reads it first; freaks out; Isaac ups reading stakes by asking her to participate.

The movie suggests that within the art life there is no such thing as finished business, only butting up against new beginnings (I write this from underneath a half worked out novel manuscript). Though Subrin has pushed Anna’s circumstances farther apart from Kate and Isaac than might have been necessary for the story, they dance together again almost as if on cue, and again it hurts.

Subrin gives us side notes from her director chair shots of the construction sites in this neighborhood where these characters have at least tried to settle (an eviction is a turn in the plot); shots of actors we know and love just trying to make rent which point out that some of their social concerns are hers. In Subrin’s world, money is the ultimate catastrophe.

“I know who you are,” says one character to Anna, who hasn’t told him her name. Her problem is that she doesn’t either, and her going back does not bring around the kind of self-discovery or rediscovery or any other trite thing that would happen in a more conventional movie about this subject. The colors are washed out but not pale; close-ups are rare but when they come they’re usually worth it; handheld camera is used often but not always; characters tend to be kept at middle distance (registering stronger); etc., etc.:

It’s a visual style with offbeatness. Like all true artists, Subrin knows how important her subjects are, so she gives them space. She keeps them cool. She separates herself from them enough to let us see them clearly because: If you care about something too much you’ll never understand what it actually looks like.

“I can see my life better now that I’m acting less like myself,” says Anna toward the end of this perpetually unsure film. That seems like progress until you realize she thinks she’s talking to Isaac when really she’s talking to Lena Dunham on Girls via Skype (long story). And maybe even after that: All along we thought we were watching Anna become less like herself while, really, we were watching Elisabeth become more like Anna, whatever that means.

Watch A Woman, A Part For Free On Gomovies.