Review of Greta (2019) by Bertaut1 — 03 May 2019

Insubstantial and forgettable, but Huppert makes it moderately entertaining.

Written by Ray Wright and Neil Jordan, and directed by Jordan, Greta is a schlocky B-movie through-and-through, with a completely ridiculous plot and over-the-top final act, all infused with a ludicrous generic campiness. It's one of those films that's so utterly horrendous in almost every way, it's actually kind of enjoyable. Very much in the tradition of stalker-thrillers such as Body Double, Fatal Attraction, and Single White Female, although nowhere near as good as any of them, there's precious little of anything going on in the film, as Jordan seems to have nothing to say. It is, however, good for a few laughs (not all of which are intentional).

Frances McCullen (Chloë Grace Moretz), a young Bostonian, is sharing an apartment in New York with her college friend Erica Penn (Maika Monroe). Having recently lost her mother to cancer, she is all-but-estranged from her workaholic father Chris (Colm Feore). When he finds a handbag on the subway, she returns it to the owner, Greta Hideg (Isabelle Huppert), who explains her husband died some time ago, and her daughter is living in Paris. The two strike up a friendship, with each filling an emotional void in the other's life. However, when Frances makes a discovery which changes the nature of their relationship, she tries to cut ties with Greta, who has no intentions of allowing Frances to walk out of her life.

Neil Jordan's eighteenth film, Greta is a B-movie before it is anything else. And although Jordan doesn't seem to be in on the joke, taking the material relatively seriously, Huppert is clearly having an absolute blast with the part - whether it's literally dancing across the set as she commits homicide, spitting chewing-gum into Frances's hair, gleefully engaging in some DIY emergency medicine, or overturning a table as if her life depended on it. She practically winks at the camera a couple of times.

Thematically, the film flirts with a few issues, but never really penetrates any of them. One could read it as a satire of NYPD inefficiency, the ineffectiveness of the justice system, and the misnomer that in a post #MeToo society, it's easier for women to report instances of stalking and harassment and be believed. However, none of these themes are explored in any significant way.

From an aesthetic point of view, the film looks great. Anna Rackard's production design contrasts the dark brown classical feel of the interior of Greta's house with the bright, grey, modernist look of the girls' sleek apartment. There's a really well-mounted scene where Greta is following Erica, and neither Erica nor the audience ever actually sees Greta, but we know she's there, because she keeps sending Frances picture messages of her pursuit. Nick Emerson's editing is especially impressive here, cutting rhythmically between Erica, Frances, and inserts of the picture messages. It's a very unsettling scene, and a unique way to stage a chase.

On the other hand, the aesthetic lets the film down in terms of location. Although set in New York, it was shot primarily in Dublin, and it shows; from the sequence of the traffic lights to the side of the road on which the cars drive to the street signs. It's very distracting, and really wouldn't have required that much effort to fix.

And there are a myriad of other problems. For starters, there's the script, wherein none of the characters are given much in the way of interiority or psychological verisimilitude. There's little emotional complexity anywhere in the film, no real sense of any of the characters having an unconscious. Frances comes across like a cog in the screenwriters' machinery, only behaving in such and such a way because the plot dictates it, with scene after perfunctory scene doing only enough to get us to the next scene and nothing else. Neither Moretz nor Monroe are able to escape the generic moulds of their character-types; the bright-eyed and innocent newbie whose kindness will be her downfall, and the tough friend who seems churlish and cynical but who ultimately proves to have been right all along.

Greta is a rote stalker-thriller that looks great, but offers nothing we haven't seen before; it's essentially a potboiler in a nice suit. No different from any of the late 80s/early 90s obsession thrillers, it's hard to figure out what Jordan was aiming for with this. You can't call it a psychological thriller about obsession and loneliness, because it does nothing with these themes, but you can't call it a self-aware B-movie, because Jordan doesn't seem to be fully cognisant that it's campy schlock. Huppert's performance elevates the material significantly, but even she can't paper over all the cracks. It's been 23 years since Jordan has made anything significant, and on the evidence of his last few films, it's going to be a while before he does so again.