This is the land of lost souls and broken dreams, and Choe is terrified that you might somehow miss this unmissable information. The film evades every opportunity for offering even the casual, fleeting beauty that can be experienced by the deeply troubled. When Nancy, an aspiring writer with no discernable point of view, temps at a dentistry office, of course it’s a rathole in a barren strip mall. When Nancy cooks Betty an egg, of course it’s so dry and unappealing that you can practically taste the tastelessness. When Betty covers herself up with a blanket, of course it’s ratty and hideously colored. These stifling details are par for the course of American indie miserablism. Nancy is forever glued to her computer and cellphone, understandably searching for any escape from this existence, while her mother’s face, twisted in gnarls of disappointment, pain, and resentment, is transfixed by the shrill programs that play on an ancient television set. It’s occupied by Betty (Ann Dowd), whose arm twitches from Parkinson’s disease, and who endlessly pesters her daughter, Nancy (Andrea Riseborough), reading the young woman’s mail, which is kept in an overflowing basket that embodies the discomfort of their lives. The small house at the center of writer-director Christina Choe’s feature-length debut, Nancy, is cramped and disheveled.
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