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Sherrybaby
When I saw Richard Kelly’s excellent Donnie Darko I was, like most people, taken with the storytelling and the performance of Jake Gyllenhaal but a little mentioned aspect of the film also made a strong impression; Maggie Gyllenhaal’s small supporting role as Donnie’s sister. I’ve followed her career since and always been impressed by her, even in such shockingly dreadful films as Trust The Man.
Sherrybaby gives Gyllenhaal her best role in years. She plays a recovering heroin addict in her mid twenties emerging from prison desperate to be allowed to be a mother to her six year old daughter (Simpkins) again and trying to reconcile with her Brother (Henke) who has been looking after her daughter while she’s been in jail. Gyllenhaal is typically astonishing as Sherry. She reminds me of the young Jennifer Jason Leigh in the way that she vanishes into her roles and inhabits them with utter fearlessness. She’s not afraid of the fact that Sherry is not always sympathetic; at one point you watch as she licks out a baggie of cocaine, making sure she’s got it all, a moment you wouldn’t see many other actresses play. It’s her sheer desperation that is really touching though as the hunger that Sherry displays in all her relationships; sexual and familial is played with absolute reality. It’s an extreme role, taking in nakedness both emotional and literal and in a just world it would have seen Gyllenhaal up for some awards last year. The film, sadly, doesn’t live up to this central tour de force. The screenplay, by Director Collyer, is rather rote and predictable; we’ve all seen this film before. There are also many under-developed threads; the relationship between Sherry and her sister-in-law (Barkan) is promisingly fractious, but never fully explored and the relationship between Sherry and her Father (Bottoms) goes to a very disturbing place for one brief moment, which is then never mentioned again. It feels like the film would benefit from having some of its deleted scenes added back in. The other performances are all fine, but none bar Brad William Henke’s excellent low-key turn as Sherry’s brother make much of an impression because Gyllenhaal all but acts them off the screen. At the end of the day this film is an average, rather familiar, drama lifted by an extraordinary performance by one of the best actresses of her generation. |
