RIOTUS

Seriously, y’all.

I don’t know what to say about this movie – like, I literally am struggling to explain to you what this movie is about, but let me try?

So, Honey Donohue (Margaret Qualley) is a private eye in a small town in California. She gets mixed up with a dead woman…I think? See, the dead woman called to hire her the night before she bought it in the car crash and that just puts Honey’s teeth on edge.  So, Honey goes lookin’.  And she finds all sorts of dead ends and a police officer (Aubrey Plaza) who falls into bed with her. All this seems to point to something but the question is what.  Well, the audience knows because we see what is going on behind the closed doors of the local church…but do we???????

This is truly a one-of-a-kind movie.  You’ll walk out thinking about after, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it?

And why not, you ask, yeah…I can’t answer that either, not really.

See, the acting is amazing. Margaret Qualley plays Honey so impeccably – she is this perfect noir detective in modern day.  She’s got the hardness, the hollow core looking to be filled, that we expect to see in a classic noir story.  Qualley is so effortlessly stunning, even her walk is lovely to watch. 

And everyone around her is incredibly cast, everyone from the hysterical homicide detective (Charlie Day) to the sex-crazed, narcissistic pastor of the local church (Chris Evans) – they act the HELL out of this movie.  Even Aubey Plaza brings more than her usual to the plate!

The cinematography is stunning.  I felt like I knew this little town. I knew about the people struggling to make ends meet in this barren, nearly-desert backwater.  I knew about the endless, empty businesses that lined the roads that led anywhere but there.

It was epic, it was moving.

So, what’s wrong with it? 

I’m not prude, but there’s a lot of sex, a lot of sex and sexualized situations just for the sake of sex.  I’ve never seen so many sex toys in a movie in my life – and most of it objectified women.  We have full-frontal nudity of a woman in the first 10 minutes of the movie for NO REASON.  YET, we never see the Chris Evans dick and honestly we see him naked a lot more than we ever see him dressed (and we all need more Chris Evans dick in the world).

The bigger problem…I don’t think American audiences are ready for this kind of story.  It is a story of life.  There is no arc, there is no beginning and end.  Things happen, things don’t happen, life goes on and if we are lucky we survive it. For Honey, there is a thin thread of a story, but it frays at the end.  We stumble into something completely different and wonder how we got there.

I wish it were better. I wish it were more experimental. I wish they had taken risks in the filming of this, and more risks than just a lot of lesbian sex.  I wish they had pushed the envelope until we were all like: WTF did I just watch (but with awe in our voices, rather than the regret I heard walking out of the theater).

Damnit, what a waste of a good movie.