The Last Day of Our Acquaintance

Not all endings are happy. Most aren't, I'd wager; it's just how things go. Friends fall out, creative partners move in different directions, relationships decay or combust. We've all been there, one way or the other. It's why these stories are so popular – and why they can be told in so many different ways.

Heck, the two films I'm writing about today bear almost no relationship to one another. One's a tragic biopic set nearly a century ago, and the other is a contemporary horror movie. But they're both about separations, and how painful it can be to have one's illusions shattered. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, sure. But what if it just kills you?

Let’s start with Blue Moon, which reunites Richard Linklater with his frequent and most valued collaborator Ethan Hawke to re-create a night in the life of Lorenz Hart, the diminutive Broadway lyricist whose personal issues – primarily alcoholism – torpedoed his longtime partnership with composer Richard Rodgers (played here by Andrew Scott) shortly before his death from pneumonia in November of 1943.

Blue Moon, which is named for one of their most enduring compositions, takes place six months earlier, playing out in real time at the opening-night party for Oklahoma!, Rogers’ first production with his new collaborator Oscar Hammerstein II. Hart has bailed on the show to arrive at Sardi’s early and start drinking, even though he’s supposed to be on the wagon. He regales the bartender (Bobby Cannavale) and anyone else who’ll listen with stories of his new project, which has been spurred by Hart’s passion for a young woman named Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), who will also be arriving for the party.

It is quickly evident that nothing about this evening will go as Hart needs it to. And because we know he’ll be dead in six months, his every proclamation in Blue Moon – of that perfect love, of his creative rejuvenation, of his sobriety – feels like a desperate incantation, a plea for things to turn around.

At first glance, Hawke doesn’t seem right for the part; he’s more than a foot taller than the famously diminutive Hart, and a lot more Texan besides. And it does take a moment for Blue Moon to sell the casting; the cheats required to shorten Hawke’s stature are pretty awkward, and seeing Hawke’s shaved hairline is initially as jarring as the jet-black contacts he wears. But once Hart is plopped down on his stool and talking, you’ll stop thinking about it: Listening to Ethan Hawke speak is one of the great pleasures of the modern cinema, and Linklater knows that better than anyone.

The screenplay, by novelist Robert Kaplow (who also adapted his novel Me & Orson Welles for Linklater’s 2008 biopic), can be a little heavy-handed with its exposition – though Hart constantly reminding the room of his triumphs and conquests is completely in character for a prideful man who needs to convince people he’s not coming apart.

More irksome are the historical cameos; yes, it’s possible E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy) was in the lounge that night, and maybe the young Steven Sondheim (Cillian Sullivan) really did come to the party, but the specifics of their conversations with Hart feel more than a little forced. But those are minor quibbles; distractions, really. When Linklater puts the focus back on the disintegrating Hart – without a dream in his heart, without a love of his own – Blue Moon is a crushing success.

I would like to say the same about Keeper, which was marketed as “a dark trip from Osgood Perkins,” the elevated-horror director of Longlegs whose recent detour into dark comedy in The Monkey turns out to have been just a flirtation. He’s back to being serious in Keeper, to his detriment.

Keeper is a two-hander about a nice woman named Liz (Tatiana Maslany) who accompanies her doctor boyfriend Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) to his woodland cabin for the first time. It’s peaceful and remote, and there’s wine and warmth and scenery. And he’s weirdly insistent that she try the cake the caretakers left for them. It would be insulting not to. It’s a tradition.

People familiar with Perkins’ filmography will recognize elements of I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House and Gretel & Hansel, and anyone who’s ever seen a movie before will know the basic dynamic of Keeper. For a while I wondered whether that might be the point of the film – a horror/thriller spin on the way relationships start with unspoken negotiations of risk and vulnerability – but Perkins has something else in mind, and it turns out to be something a lot more prosaic.

Liz eats the cake, and the next morning Malcolm starts acting distant and weird. He’s called back to the city, and leaves Liz by herself in the cabin. She has weird dreams. She sees things. And gradually – very gradually – the real purpose of her visit becomes clear.

I have said, in the past, that every movie Oz Perkins makes feels twice as long as it needs to be. The Monkey got around that by presenting itself as a series of sketches, each one punctuated by a ridiculously over-the-top death. Keeper has no such punctuation; it prefers ellipses, moving towards its revelations like molasses – or possibly honey – spilled onto a kitchen counter. It’s not boring, exactly, because it’s pretty entertaining to watch Tatiana Maslany wander around a house in an increasing state of anxiety, but as with I Am the Pretty Thing, once you realize that’s all you’re going to get, a lot of it feels unnecessary.

Even when Nick Lepard’s script starts to offer answers, Keeper refuses to spring to life. It just shuffles Liz and Malcolm towards an expository monologue and a final sequence that offers conclusion but not catharsis. We understand what’s happening, but it still doesn’t come fully into focus – a fuzzing of mythology that worked very well for Gretel & Hansel, with its never-was medieval setting, but falls short of the mark here, with an internal logic that, once laid out, makes very little sense.

The whole thing looks gorgeous, though. Perkins has a great eye, and his gifted DP Jeremy Cox – who shot Until Branches Bend and Inedia and Mile End Kicks and the second unit of Longlegs and The Monkey – has crafted some striking images. Maslany and Sutherland are a pleasure to watch, even when nothing’s actually happening. It’s just that, well, nothing’s actually happening.

Decal’s 4K presentation of Keeper is a beaut, its UHD master crystalline and unblemished and its DTS-MA 5.1 audio slippery and atmospheric. There’s also a descriptive audio track that copes with certain challenges in really interesting ways. The only extras are Perkins’ commentary – he really does love working with actors, and has some nifty ideas about directing genre performances – and the teaser and trailer; the identical suite can be found on the companion Blu-ray.

(Elevation’s Canadian BD swaps out the descriptive track for the French dub, and doesn’t appear to include the trailer gallery. There’s no 4K release up here, either.)

The only extra on Sony’s Blue Moon BD is the theatrical trailer, which is a shame; this movie cries out for a Linklater and Hawke commentary, since their relationship informs the picture in a way few of their collaborations have. This project was a massive leap of faith for Hawke, even working with a director he’s known for thirty years, and I’d have given almost anything to hear them talk about it at length. Still, the movie looks and sounds just great … and given how infrequently Sony releases a Sony Classics title on Blu-ray these days, I will take that win. Now let’s hope Criterion is working on a release for Nouvelle Vague.

Blue Moon is now available on Blu-ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Keeper is now available in 4K/Blu-ray combo and BD-only editions from Decal Releasing in the US; in Canada, it’s avalable on Blu-ray from Elevation Pictures.

Up next: The Warner Archive Collection drops a new wave of themed collections, and Criterion upgrades a Jacques Tati 65mm masterwork to Ultra High Definition. But don’t miss out on Friday’s What’s Worth Watching column, available to paid subscribers. Not a paid subscriber? Upgrade that membership! The groundhog demands it!