Steer clear of Becky with the bad attitude
One can imagine how much Elisabeth Moss enjoyed playing a Courtney Love-esque weapon of self-destruction in “Her Smell,” just as Bradley Cooper had the time of his life rocking out in “A Star Is Born,” and Elle Fanning looks like she had a ball portraying an aspiring pop star in this week’s “Teen Spirit.”
These are juicy roles, filled with plenty of opportunities for the actor to engage in offstage melodrama
play rock star.
The versatile and always compelling Moss (“Mad Men,” “The Handmaid’s Tale”) is undeniably a force as Becky Something, a mercurial 1990s punk rocker and the leader of an all-female band who seems possessed with the insatiable drive to alienate everyone in her life and destroy her career.
But just as Becky wears out her welcome nearly everywhere she goes, the movie wore me down to the point of irritation.
Becky is a talent; Becky is a nightmare. Becky is haunted by her past; Becky is an addict and a narcissist, but hey, remember, Becky is a talent.
Rinse and repeat and repeat. And repeat again.
Almost always looking and behaving as if she’s about an hour away from going to rehab, Becky treats her bandmates like subservient necessities and lashes out at her mother (Virginia Madsen) and her ex-husband (Dan Stevens) every chance she gets.
Some of these people sometimes deserve the wrath of Becky. Sometimes. But she almost always has the vitriol turned up to 11.
There’s much to admire in “Her Smell,” from Moss’s uncompromising and raw performance to the supporting work from the ensemble cast to the authentic depictions of backstage madness. The gifted writer-director Alex Ross Perry films in an appropriately gritty, sometimes claustrophobically intense docudrama style.
But stretched over 135 minutes and overloaded with shout-to-the-rafters confrontations, “Her Smell” has too much talking and squawking, and not enough rocking and rolling.