PFS SpringFest: Thelma, In a Violent Nature, and The Idea of You

PFS SpringFest: Thelma, In a Violent Nature, and The Idea of You

Thelma (dir. Josh Margolin) – When our titular hero, played with charming gusto by the legendary June Squibb, falls victim to a predatory scam call, her family is just happy that their nonagenarian relative is physically okay. We get the sense that her daughter (Parker Posey) and son-in-law (Clark Gregg) will be just fine. Ten grand seems like a pittance to her well-off brood, but to Thelma, such an affront to her morals won’t stand, and she takes it upon herself to get her money back, much to the stress of her loving grandson (Fred Hechinger, who also produced). 

Squibb moves uncommonly well for a person nearing a century of life, which is good because Thelma, at its heart, is an action movie. Margolin riffs on multiple action beats without leaning into parody. Instead of a car chase, things happen at the speed of a mobility scooter (which Thelma has lifted from her friend Ben, played by a scene-stealing Richard Roundtree). This, of course, is set to a jazzy score that would make Lalo Schifrin proud (in fact, it’s a viewing of Mission: Impossible – Fallout that inspires Thelma to take action). One scene, where Thelma’s family traces her whereabouts through one of her trademark accidental Instagram posts parodies the “enhance…enhance” trope that Jason Bourne’s handlers love to use, only here it’s “zoom in, zoom in!” And really, how different is an all-seeing government spy satellite from a LifeAlert tracker?

While Gregg, Posey, and Hechinger are funny in their scenes together, the film tends to lose energy when it moves away from Squibb and Roundtree, and the three of them feel less like full-bodied characters and more like plot devices. When their scenes shoot for big emotional beats, they don’t always land. 

In a post-film Q&A, Margolin noted that the film is based on a true story. While he and his family were able to stop his 103 year-old grandmother from falling victim to the scam, Margolin assured us that his peppy Nana would’ve absolutely gone to the same comical lengths to get her money back. 

In A Violent Nature (dir. – Chris Nash)

There’s an episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia titled Being Frank. It follows DeVito’s Frank Reynolds character through a day in his life. The brilliance of it is that a standard-formula Sunny episode is happening in the periphery of the episode, and we’re only privy to small details of it through Frank’s eyes. In A Violent Nature takes a similar approach to the campground slasher, most specifically the Friday the 13th movies. 

Standing in for Jason Voorhees is Johnny, an undead murderer who emerges from his grave when a group of partying teens pilfer from it a golden medallion given to him by his deceased parents. Johnny does not speak, preferring to communicate using his hands, an axe, a log-splitter, and any of a number of items one might find at a forest ranger station. It’s best to keep the internal mythology a secret, as one of the film’s pleasures is learning the details of the slasher movie that’s happening to everyone else through John’s eyes and ears. To this end, the dialogue spoken by the pool of victims is appropriately dry and stilted — they all speak and behave the way filmmakers seemed to think teenagers did back in 1982. This, alongside some deeply depraved kill sequences provide for a fair amount of jet black humor. 

The film is an acquired taste, or at least, a very specific taste (one I’m pleased to be able to enjoy). There’s a high-class element being inserted into a deliciously low-class subgenre.  Early in the film the way the camera follows Johnny, who, much like Jason Voorhees, patiently marches toward his victims, closing the gap consistently no matter how fast they run, is almost Malick-ian. The wilderness photography is often gorgeous, going hand in hand with dense, dynamic sound design. Nash seems to be having fun matching pure cinema to trashy bloodletting, and it’s in this way that the film celebrates its influences and avoids exhibiting disdain for their inherent silliness. 

The campground slasher is not typically a fertile ground for cinematic innovation, but this experiment proves that it can be done. Decades of undead slasher villains have seen them morph from agents of terror to anti-heroes. In a Violent Nature uses, and then subverts its own framing device to have it both ways. We love Johnny the same way we love Jason, but when the time comes to be afraid of the former, he’s absolutely terrifying. 

The Idea of You (dir. Michael Showalter)

This delightful and charming romantic comedy shares its target audience with the source novel of the same name: horned-up elder millennial moms looking for a little wish fulfillment fantasy. And why shouldn’t they have it? Especially when it’s this much fun. 

Anne Hathaway plays Solène, a divorced woman on the brink of forty with a teenage daughter and a hand-sewn vintage backpack full of trust issues. Her husband left her for another woman a few years back, and in a subsequent show of his immaturity, backs out of a planned trip to Coachella with his daughter on account of business. Solène reluctantly fills in for him, and soon finds herself in a meet-cute with Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), the lead singer of August Moon, the film’s version of One Direction. A hot and heavy, jet setting romance quickly ensues, but given the age gap, the very different nature of their lives, and the fact that Solène’s daughter was once a huge fan of the band, things aren’t so cut and dry, ethically speaking. 

The film proves to be a breezy watch. It isn’t until the final reel that any conflict is even introduced, allowing for most of the runtime to be devoted to fun sexy times between two hot people, one of whom has plucked the other from a normal (see: ungodly wealthy) life, and brought her into his world of stratospheric celebrity status. Hathaway and Galitzine both do wonders in making the romance between these two believable, elevating it into something more compelling and human than a story like this is typically apt to depict. In fact, the script runs the gamut of perspectives regarding the responsibilities each party assumes when engaging in this sort of thing, bringing nuance and thematic heft to what could’ve been simple romantic fantasy. 

Showalter, doing his best Nancy Meyers impression, keeps things light and fun, while a fantastic supporting cast, including Annie Mumolo and Reid Scott, bring additional humor and drama in equal measure. There was an opportunity for the depiction of modern pop music to fall into the realm of parody, but this film smartly plays it straight, which makes the satirical edge that much sharper.