Chris Rock writes, directs and co-stars in Misty Green (now on Netflix), but Rosalind Eleazar is the name you’ll walk away from the film remembering. She jumps from notable TV roles in Slow Horses and Harlan Coben’s Missing You to headlining her first feature film, playing the title character, a struggling, self-destructive actor who finds her life rather dramatically coming to a head. And it’s a classic case of an inspired star outshining the material.
MISTY GREEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Note the symbolism: Misty’s (Eleazar) Emmy sits on a shelf in somebody else’s apartment. She lives there, mind you, but the name on the deed belongs to a sugar daddy whose widow storms through the door past the framed Cosmo cover featuring Misty and the lowercase-c coke on the table to evict her. Such is Misty’s life as an underemployed actor who sure seems to be making said underemployment worse by sexing-and-drugging her way through the nights and auditioning and piecing together audition videos during the day. She has seven days to find a place to live, and her fear is that she’ll end up in one of the Los Angeles homeless encampments featured in Misty Green’s opening credits montage. Hollywood!
Of course, she needs money. Apartments are expensive, even the grungy ones in the Valley. And coke habits are even pricier. We see her audition for a role and get the sense that she’s traversing nearly burned bridges to do so, scenes peppered with references to past assault charges. Her agent (Topher Grace) is also sort of her former agent. Her bestie Naomi (Anna Kendrick) has mostly foregone the life of a struggling actor to settle down and get married, something Misty finds repulsive. She’s offered a dubious gig in Dubai by sleaz-o/grease-o producer and party pal Zach (Adam Driver), and by “dubious” we mean “morally nauseating.” On top of that, her brother Jay (Daniel Kaluuya) suddenly turns up, from incarceration or the mental hospital or both, to make everything even more unpredictable.
Misty’s way out of “All This” might be Jordan Green (Rock), no relation, a director she’s worked with previously, so no surprise, he’s still a bit salty. He’s helming a Dreamgirls adaptation to shoot in Vancouver, and he’s tired of casting a musical with actors who can’t sing, and he knows she’s talented, and she can sing her ass off, as we see in a scene in which she sings Radiohead’s “Creep” to a vaguely engaged audience in a hotel lounge. Can she tame her more troublesome instincts to get her life on the right track? Or is she destined for a tent city on the sidewalk?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Thematic shades of All About Eve mingle with Jackie Brownish images of L.A. and a satirical tone not too terribly far removed from The Substance (note the aerobics-class scenes), but also pretty far removed from The Substance (note the lack of body horror).
Performance Worth Watching: This is a true showcase for Eleazar, who delivers a knotty-complex performance that sure seems to be — ironically, considering the character she plays — a star-making turn.
Sex And Skin: Lady toplessness; a couple of scenes that the 1980s HBO guide would’ve dubbed “sexual situations.”
Our Take: Misty Green is essentially a bunch of stuff happening, whether it’s the confluence of crises in Misty’s life or Rock’s overly ambitious and seriously satirical rummaging through racism, sexism, classism and homelessness in Hollywood, be it the business or the borough (one pot simmering in the background involves the murder of a female college student and how authorities and the media jump to the conclusion that the perpetrator is a Black man, and it’s one contextual strand too many). It’s a lot, and at times Rock seems to barely have a handle on it all, such that the narrative plays out with flattened inevitability, the big-name supporting roles tend to be one-dimensional, and it lacks dramatic buildup and tension, leading to a climax that’s more of a deflation than an explosion.
Perhaps Rock is trying to rebel against expectations, foregoing intensity for realism, a decision that works against his more satirical overtures (and his somewhat egotistical propensity for giving himself dialogue that seems more like bits from a standup routine than a film script). But he almost certainly understands the power of his headliner to hold the project together. Misty is a frustrating character who makes poor decisions and actively pushes people away at the same time she draws them in, us included. Eleazar excels at developing and embodying that tension, and we love her a smidge more than we hate her because we understand how the -isms of the situation have rendered Misty a tragic cynic. Even if the thematic focus of Misty Green, the movie, wavers, Eleazar ensures that Misty Green, the character, is unforgettable.
Our Call: You won’t regret watching Eleazar work. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
