Eight Great Films at BAMcinemaFest’s Opening Weekend
Kate Plays Christine
Directed by Robert Greene
Greene’s followup to the similarly minded Actress combines a purported biopic of Christine Chubbuck, a Sarasota anchorwoman who notoriously shot herself on air in 1974 and died hours later, with the making of that movie, particularly the preparation of actress Kate Lyn Sheil for the lead role. This liberated genre-bending is nothing new for Greene, or documentary film in general, but this heavily improvised experiment also functions as a righteous excoriation of the pointlessness of the respectable middlebrow biopic, not surprising considering Greene’s portfolio of critical writing. Excitingly roundabout but at the same time pointedly direct, it attacks the kind of middlebrow representational drama that either has the draining lack of imagination to merely recreate history or the gall to attempt to “unlock” the reasons why Chubbuck (or any other noteworthy troubled soul) would be such a way or do such a thing. Sometimes over-infatuated with its own meta stratagems though it may be, Kate Plays Christine’s machinery of wheels is always cranking vigorously. And Sheil is compelling to behold as she solemnly submits to a spray tan (the tanning bed being no match for her whiteness) and a local-color Florida wig shop, where she bonds with the proprietress, and generally tries to do right by Chubbuck as a fellow woman outnumbered and made to feel inadequate in her field by men. Justin Stewart (Screens June 18, 3:45pm, followed by Sheil and Greene Q&A; a Grasshopper Film release)