Under the Influencer should be depressing as hell; it’s about Influencer World, a setting as dark as Hollywood in the 1920s. Instead of hitting us like Requiem for a Dream, it feels like it's going to play out almost like a good-hearted All About Eve if it were directed by Frank Capra, but then it does something completely unexpected.
It becomes the story of a life.
We follow Tori (played with incredible emotional flexibility by Taylor Scorse) as she navigates a continuing social media presence that may well have peaked. She’s in her mid-20s, and her team is attempting to keep her in the limelight. She, though, has grown weary of that world, but still keeps going because moving on could easily mean moving out of the public eye. While the professional side of her life seems to be on a slide, her world is broader and more entangled than her viewers could understand.
Now, the parts of this absolute feast of a film are magnificent, adding up to a sum that can’t be denied, but there are intangibles that toss us into another dimension. Taylor Scorse is fantastic, largely because at no point does she feel as if she’s trying to play Norma Desmond. Instead, she goes in for a human trying to avoid becoming a caricature that an audience can love. This is a tightrope that any actor would have trouble with, but at the same time, it is not a performance that is made by the material, but one that turns the solid script into something nearly brutally realistic.
Because we’ve seen this, right?
We’ve watched the rise, burn, and crash of stars, right? We’ve seen one YouTube sensation after another do everything to make it, then claw and scream and fight and fall and inch themselves back up a bit before the drastic, the drama, the endgame. We know this arc; Kenneth Anger loved it when he imagined it for every Tinseltown star of the Golden Age. This time, we’re given the kind of performance that makes us not only fall for our lead the way an audience online would, but the kind of presence that infuses a film with both warmth and confusion. Nowhere is this more apparent than when we she her finally takes a jump into music, a dream of hers that her assistant had been trying to get her to dive into. The segment, and the montage that plays out under it, is exactly what a film like this needs. It's not a triumphant step; it's a real step. That moment nearly had me in tears…which really would have worried my officemate.
The vulnerability of Tori is baked into the script, as is a devil-angel dichotomy for her producer and assistant for the first half of the film. Maybe it’s not a devil-angel thing, but more a Ghost of Christmas Past vs. Ghost of Christmas Future sorta thing…only way less dark. There’s a Ghost of Christmas Present, too, and it’s another exceptional performance. The entire character slate is full of classic film archetypes, only brough forth into something newer, or at least less pat. There's the mysterious stranger, the mystic, the plucky (and persistant) sidekick, the hired gun, the rising star, and even a sorta whacky neighbor. Somehow, these don't add up to something that feels like everything else, though. They feel like the people in your neighborhood, the people that you meet while you're walking down the street each day.
When its boiled down to syrup, and we get the great reveal of the reality behind Tori, there you feel a turn out of the city and into the desert we only vaguely know. It doesn't feel like Tori is lost, though. It feels like Tori is finally finding herself. She is far more lost when she is in her element than when she takes herself out of it. Pulling that trick off is the mark of a filmmaker who knows what they’re doing, and actors who understand that a performance is an enabling process. When we get a lovely one-on-one exchange between Tori (I’m sorry, Vicki…) and a young man she just met, the dialogue is infused with patter and reaction and reflection, and most importantly, retention. We can see how she draws it in and lets it stew, and every moment from then on reflects on that in a way that is clear. That montage I mentioned earlier? Same thing happens, and it plays out across the rest of the film too. Same with her breakdown. Same with everything. Every moment infuses every scene, and you can sense the changes in Tori, and more importantly, in the entire film. This is a film that feels as if its an evolution, and not just a plot that plays out; it is a reality that we just happen to get a glimpse of through a screen.
Also there is the single sweetest, most perfect moment I’ve ever seen on screen. It surprised me with the simplicity, the perfection, and the absolute joy it filled me with.
I can’t recommend Under the Influencer enough. It’s one that made me think, and feel, and ultimately, want to get up and tell people.
But here, not on YouTube.
tickets.cinequest.org/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=292620~a12ee803-7eae-437e-8208-1c4d52da2020&epguid=330ab4d6-45cd-4e3a-a87e-02c739b12dbb&
Under the Influencer shows on August 21st at 930pm at the Hammer Theatre in San Jose, and then again August 24th at 11am at the ShowPlace ICON Theatre in Mountain View.