SHIRLEY (Sundance 2020 Premiere)

by Le Anne Lindsay, Editor

My girl Elisabeth Moss was in the House! her!!!

The movie is a fictional character study of the author Shirley Jackson (Moss) who wrote that chilling story we all had to read in high school “The Lottery” about the town that stones someone every year.

The movie explores the torturous profession of writing, life in Academia, bonds of marriage and complexity of feminism with a veneer of the supernatural.

The lighting & coloring of the film adds an atmosphere of unpredictability. The second lead Rose (Odessa Young) imbues her character with an off kilter sensuality; and of course Elisabeth Moss is just crazy watchable in anything and everything, remember she was the only saving grace of “The Kitchen”. Despite these favorable things, on the whole, I’m not crazy about SHIRLEY, as it takes too long to build to a dissatisfying ending.

See below Q&A from SHIRLEY premiere w/director Josephine Decker , screenwriter Sarah Gubbins and entire cast & crew.

Note: Decker won the Sundance U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Auteur Filmmaking.