Her Smell

As of this morning (the penultimate day of TIFF 2018), “Her Smell” has been the best film of the Platform series for me. It was also one of a number of films with strong female protagonists that found their way into my schedule.

Elizabeth Moss is a self-destructive singer fronting a three-piece rock band with serious indie creed (the closest analogue in the real world would peobably be Courtney Love and Hole, respectively). We see here at two particular periods of her life — one being a disastrous “comeback” period after her best work has been done and several years later when she has retired from the business.

A woman with demons, both internal and ingested, she is a whirlwind of problems at the nadir of her career. Moss is incendiary in this section and the director (Alex Ross Perry) puts you at the entre of this, using a dynamic camera and a punishingly effective sound design to put you there. At times, it feels like you are on the receiving end of her madness. The later section is the opposite and he does a great job of making both halves of her character “real”.

For such an all-consuming character, it would be easy for the rest of the cast to be completely overshadowed by her. To their credit, the other players in her orbit do a good job of inhabiting their roles. In particular, Eric Stoltz does some fine work as the head of the label that signed “Something She” on their way up and who might be pulled apart by the chaos on her way down.

Although not a “big screen” movie per se, it’s worth seeing it in a theatre to get the full force of a very good performance.