Summary
6 tech score
“Unsane” (Bleecker Street)
Claire Foy gained national attention with her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in TV series “The Crown.” Now she does a full one eighty as she stars in the thriller “Unsane.” This is a Steven Soderbergh film that puts Ms Foy center stage and makes the movie totally about her. She can handle all the attention and the movie rises above expectations because of her performance.
Foy plays Sawyer Valentini, a woman working in an office in Pennsylvania. At first appearance she appears to be a bit cold and a bit erratic. So it is no surprise when she makes an appointment to talk with a counselor about her bouts of depression and other problems. What she doesn’t know is she has chosen the wrong place to bare her soul. After signing a few “boilerplate” papers Sawyer finds herself locked up in a mental health facility. Then the question arises, is she sane or not?
Things get even more complicated when she has a violent reaction to the presence of one of the aides (Joshua Leonard) at the facility. She claims he is a man who has been stalking her while he says he has never met her before in his life. A fellow inmate, Nate (Jay Pharoah), claims to believe her but cautions her to just play it cool and wait for her release. We all know that is not going to happen.
It is a pleasant surprise to have Amy Irving appear in the film as Sawyer’s mother. This is a rare screen appearance for her and she handles the role nicely. What is not pleasant is a jolting appearance by Matt Damon in the middle of the film. He and Soderbergh are friends and obviously thought this would be a fun thing to do. It doesn’t work that way as he disrupts the flow of the film.
There are some plot elements which are never resolved but the basic premise of the story along with Foy’s performance make it a film worth seeing. She throws herself into the role and allows the character to be unlikable at best and despicable at worst. Both Leonard and Pharoah provide strong support.
The film is rated R for profanity and violence.
There is a Hitchcockian element in the film with Sawyer being an ordinary person caught up in an extraordinary situation. The thought of “being in her place” is enough to scare the bejeebies out of you. Scary situations of this type always make a movie more fun.
I scored “Unsane” a crazy 6 out of 10.
Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com
