Fay Grim

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Audience Member A sendup of sorts of paranoid espionage thrillers plays it straight with a manic energy and more convoluted twists than you can shake a stick at. FIlmed almost exclusively in so many dutch angles it could make Battlefield Earth blush. It is worth the watch for the performances of Parker Posey and Jeff Goldblum, obviously having fun. But the lack of any real substance and no through-line strong enough through all the twists to really feel like it matters. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Audience Member "Henry Fool" was a strange indie dramedy about a weirdo writer who came into the life of a garbage man and inspired him to also become a weirdo writer. Writer/Director Hal Hartley revisits the characters created in that film 10 years later in "Fay Grim" and, to make things even stranger, turns it all into an international spy thriller. It is one of the strangest things, and I kind of loved it for that. The movie is a tad confusing and not without it's problems, but it is so unique and strange, and so unlike it's preceding film that it becomes something entirely different...it just happens to be inhabited with these quirky odd characters we've met in an entirely different kind of film before. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/17/23 Full Review Audience Member starring the queen of indie cinema Parker Posey + director hal hartly= good viewing Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review Audience Member Fay Grim is Hal Hartley's sequel to Henry Fool from 1997 and it continues the story of Fay Grim who is struggling as a single mother after her husband Henry had to flee the country. Her brother Simon is in prison for aiding Henry in his escape and Fay's son Ned is becoming more like his father which worries her. So Fay thinks she's finally finished with that point in her life then 2 CIA agents show up wanting to read Henry's journals because they believe they may be treasonous and they need Fay to retrieve the final journals in Paris so they can piece together the mystery of what the journals point to and whether or not Henry is a threat to national security. So Hal Hartley has crafted a really fun spy comedy of sorts. Like with all Hal Hartley's films like the humor is really subdued. But I think this is one of his funniest movies because he takes this really crazy premise and just rolls with it. Jeff Goldblum is really awesome in this he plays Agent Fulbright who may know more information then he's letting on but he's also kind of oblivious about what's going on in his operation. This movie is really funny and smart. But in the last half the movie kind of starts to embrace the spy genre and it kind of starts to sink but it didn't kill my enjoyment. I still think this is a really smart deadpan comedy and it's one of Hal Hartley's best. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Audience Member There are more than a few problems with this film, but it was cool just to see where "Fay" has ended up since the original film. However, like nearly all sequels - it fails to fully live up to the original. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/29/23 Full Review Audience Member OH MY GOD INTERNATIONAL ESPIONAGE! *Takes a deep breath*. I thank God because He made me objective and analytical in my film appreciation. Let's.... dissect this mutant of a film. Hartley is courageous. When there is a very risky project at hand, if you take it, you either win a lot or lose a lot. There are hardly gray areas in those cases. What Hartley wanted to achieve was a twist so unexpected that even close followers or Henry Fool fans would be surprised in the same way that Miike fans were not ready for something like <i>Visitor Q</i> or <i>Happiness of the Katakuris</i>. What if most of, if not everything that Henry Fool claimed to have done in the past movie turned out to be true? This plot unfolds. Watching <i>Fay Grim</i> is like witnessing an imaginary, fictional "what-if" alternate reality in which the characters that were so much profoundly dissected and analyzed from their most hidden and rotten layers of personality take whole new, unrelated and implausible roles. The result is the cheapest excuse available: an international espionage drivel. The reason that puts so many fans off is precisely such cheap turn of events. I don't. For once, I struggled, but succeeded at adapting an open mentality while repeating to myself: "This is a director taking risky chances with unexpected twists. Don't give up. You like that. You missed watching something like this." But then the movie kept progressing, and not only was I completely uninterested at the plot elements and horrified with the poorly done technical qualities during the "action" scenes, but also I couldn't relate to the characters I had known beforehand so intimately. I felt betrayed and mocked. It didn't even achieve to be a quality action film or a smart comedic spoof. No. It was a pretentious and shallow plot-twist show. So, I have a final question for Hal Hartley, if I may: What was the inconvenience of making <i>Fay Grim</i> as an independent film, completely unrelated with the characters? What were the aspects, either artistic or creative, that forced <i>Fay Grim</i> to become a poorly done and embarrassingly humorous vehicle of parody improvisations that forced its plot connections with the past film through ridiculous premises? This is not a sequel to Henry Fool. It's fucking Twilight Zone. It's a dream. It's a dream that Henry had in the previous film while being drunk and passing out in an outtake. Yes. That's gotta be it. That's gotta be it, dammit! 41/100 Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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