Pattinson plays lovesick cowboy in ‘Damsel’
“Damsel” takes most of the elements you’ve ever seen in a Western and tweaks some, twists others and comes up with something unusual and mostly satisfying.
David and Nathan Zellner wrote and directed the film. (They’ve got a thing for subverting genres; their excellent “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” put a different spin on the quest movie.) “Damsel” is a lot of fun when the Zellners don’t try too hard to make it offbeat. It works best when its weirdness is genuine, not selfconscious.
The film begins with a terrific prologue in which the great Robert Forster plays a preacher waiting impatiently for a stage coach. Everyone else — including Henry (David Zellner), who’s waiting, too — is going West. Not the preacher. He’s been there, and he’s seen enough. He wanted to convert “savages” to Christianity, but they weren’t especially interested, and he figures there are enough Christians already.
But Henry needs to make a fresh start. He’s not a preacher, himself, but he can certainly act like one, once he gets to wherever he’s going.
When the movie proper begins, Samuel (Robert Pattinson) shows up, looking for Pastor Henry, which is what Henry’s going by these days. The pastor’s passed-out drunk, but Samuel is undeterred. He’s going to find Penelope, the love of his life, and propose to her. He needs Pastor Henry to marry them on the spot.
In addition to a fancy ring, Samuel has Butterscotch, a miniature horse. He’s named for Penelope’s second-favorite candy; Samuel didn’t think Horehound was an appropriate name for a horse.
So off they go. Henry mostly wants a drink. Samuel talks incessantly about Penelope. Turns out she’s been kidnapped and is living in captivity, Samuel assumes, with her captor. They run across some trouble along the way themselves, including a run-in with the kidnapper’s brother, Rufus (Nathan Zellner), that gets ugly.
But eventually they find Penelope (Mia Wasikowska) and things go ... unexpectedly. Without spoiling too much, it’s fair to say that if Penelope is indeed a damsel, she’s not really in distress. At least not until Samuel and Pastor Henry show up.
The film turns upon their arrival. It gets darker, fast. Penelope doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and once you’ve heard Samuel sing the awful song he wrote for her, it’s pretty clear he’s a fool — for love, maybe, or maybe just a fool. Wasikowska is quite good, as is Pattinson, who continues to mine unexpected roles with good results.
There’s something genial about the whole affair. Take Pastor Henry. He’s a drunk and a fraud, but he really is trying to make a fresh start. It’s just not going so well. It’s lonely out West, he complains at one point. Life is hard. Everyone in the film is unsatisfied to some degree, which means everyone is searching for something, whether it’s true love or a stiff drink.
The Zellners don’t make fun of Westerns. They clearly love them, and know their way around the genre. They just turn them around on themselves. When it works, it’s really enjoyable.
When it doesn’t, it’s almost always a function of their trying too hard to be different. They’ve got all the elements of a traditional film presented in a slightly skewed way already. “Damsel” is plenty good without them trying too hard. It’s best when it just follows its own twisted path.