Anne at 13,000 Feet. (2019, Kazik Radwanski) (Patreon)

63/100

Crafty choice to give Anne a job working with very young children—I went in cold and initially perceived her behavior as wholly performative, with the light not truly dawning until she responds irrationally to a co-worker's simple request and constructs absurd justifications for doing so. Indeed, the film is so cagey about her history/condition, expertly hinting at a known diagnosis that everyone's tiptoeing around in her presence, that I kinda suspect she's tolerated by the daycare center in part because it's meant as therapy for her. (Somehow there was never a moment when I worried that the kids were in any danger.) Deragh Campbell does an amazing job of maintaining a mostly functional façade, in the way that great actors portray drunkenness as a valiant effort to appear sober; there's an air of plausible deniability—often explicitly couched as a "joke" or "prank"—to each of her outbursts, which with one exception can only be called demurely manic. (She lets her guard down with her mother.) Woman Under the Influence comparisons are inevitable but should emphasize that Radwanski brings this in at less than half of Cassavetes' epic length, avoiding any repetitive sprawl [/blasphemy]. On the other hand, I don't love his claustrophobic handheld camera, which may be thematically apropos but gets oppressive even at a mere 75 minutes. And I'd have counseled him to restrict Anne's skydiving to the end, rather than have it serve as an unmistakable controlling metaphor throughout. (Though I guess it's important that she make a solo jump—there's a reason we stay on the plane rather than GoPro it again—in which case it apparently can't be her first. Still, gets a little reductive.) It's not quite The Forest for the Trees, but then few filmmakers are Maren Ade; worth seeing just for Campbell's barely controlled giggle fit when Anne meets up with a Tinder date who clearly—though she never quite directly says so—put up a truly ancient photo of himself for women to swipe.

ANAL-RETENTIVE TITLE CORNER: According to Michael Sicinski, who saw the film nearly two years ago, the title was originally spelled out as Anne at Thirteen Thousand Feet. Radwanski apparently decided that was overly cumbersome, though, and it's now 13,000. (There's still a period at the end, though—an affectation that I wish folks would stop using. Is it left over from an earlier incarnation in which it was 30,000 Ft., perhaps?)