“I feel like people never make films about ordinary people who don’t really do anything,” sighs the lovely young center of Alex Ross Perry’s frustrating “Golden Exits.” Her name is Naomi (Emily Browning, “American Gods”), and she has arrived in Brooklyn from Australia only to find herself fetishized by a group of ordinary people who don’t really do anything.
As it happens, the 25-year-old Naomi fits this description quite well, too. But it’s hard to know if Perry realizes it, since his camera ogles her in much the same way everyone else does.
No one stares more than Naomi’s flaccidly creepy middle-aged boss, Nick (ex-Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, perfectly cast). Nick is an archivist, currently tasked with making sense of his father-in-law’s life. His wife, Alyssa (Chloë Sevigny), wants to believe that he hired Naomi for her skills, but Alyssa’s sister Gwen (Mary-Louise Parker) is skeptical. And rightfully so: not only does Nick have a vaguely referenced history of infidelity, but he almost immediately shows up at Naomi’s door drunk, at night, wheedling for some company.
Meanwhile, Naomi’s sights are firmly set on Buddy (Jason Schwartzman), a record producer who married his own young assistant, Jess (Analeigh Tipton). Buddy tries to resist Naomi’s charms, but finds himself making more and more excuses when he comes home late. Jess’s miserably single sister Sam (Lily Rabe) is simultaneously suspicious of Buddy and jealous that Jess gets to be married at all.
As the men either harass or flirt with Naomi, hoping to recapture the freedom of their former selves — or at least the image they’d like to have of their former selves — the women feel suffocated in a different way. They use her presence as an impetus to analyze their own unhappiness, caught as they are in the sludge of both their and their spouses’ mid-life crises.
Perry (“Queen of Earth”) sets his scenes from two marriages to Keegan DeWitt’s elegiac piano score, solemnly watching as people get dressed in their pristinely empty brownstones, or sit glumly at their cramped and messy desks. Every ordinary action they take, every unrealistic and carefully chosen word they say, is treated with great portent. Sean Price Williams (“Good Time”) is equally meticulous in his cinematography; Brooklyn is shot so precisely that it becomes its own player.
But to what end? Bergman, Cassavetes, and Allen excavated this material decades ago, and there are no new insights uncovered amid the interior lives of these husbands and wives.
While the actors do fight to find depth, their characters are consistently sketched in two dimensions. Frank is a self-deluded narcissist. Gwen is sharp-tongued and bitter. Alyssa and Sam slog through their lives in an endless state of passive or aggressive complaint. Schwartzman and Tipton manage to offer tantalizing hints of a deeper pathos, but they aren’t given the tools to reach it.
We can see Browning, too, struggling to create more. As written, though, Naomi is primarily a concept, an unformed young woman who exists to be observed and objectified. She could be an interesting catalyst for the other characters, but none of them actually find any meaningful perspective or motivation as a result of their interactions with her. Just like Frank, the film winds up exploiting her youth and beauty for its own indulgent ends.
Perry is an interesting filmmaker, whose previous work is worth seeking out. In 2014’s “Listen Up Philip,” for example, he brought in a wonderfully sharp Elisabeth Moss to puncture the pretensions of the off-putting titular character (played, to much better effect than he’s used here, by Schwartzman). This disappointing effort, alas, can best be summed up by a psychically weary Alyssa: “Is that all there is?”
97 Sundance Portraits From TheWrap at Acura Studios With Keira Knightley, Robert Pattinson and More (Photos)
Photographed by Irvin Rivera for TheWrap at the Acura Studios
Actress Chloë Sevigny, "Lizzie"
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"Lizzie" writer Bryce Kass, actor Denis O'Hare, director Craig William Macneill and actress Chloë Sevigny
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"Believer" director Don Argott with subjects Tyler Glenn and Dan Reynolds
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"What They Had" stars Taissa Farmiga, Michael Shannon, writer-director Elizabeth Chomko, Blythe Danner and Hilary Swank
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Actor Michael Shannon, "What They Had"
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Meg McGarry, Flynn McGarry, Cameron Yates and Laura Coxson, "Chef Flynn"
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Flynn McGarry, "Chef Flynn"
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Director Jesse Peretz, "Juliet, Naked"
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Actor Chris-O'Dowd, "Juliet, Naked"
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Director Eugene Jarecki, "The King"
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"An Evening With Beverly Luff Lin" director Jim Hosking with stars Aubrey Plaza, Matt Berry, Craig Robinson, and Jemaine Clement
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"Private Life" stars Kayli Carter and Kathryn Hahn with writer-director Tamara Jenkins
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Actress Kayli Carter, "Private Life"
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"Private Life" producer, Ali Abouomar
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"Eighth Grade" writer-director Bo Burnham and star Elsie Fisher
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Actress Kiersey Clemons, "Hearts Beat Loud"
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"Arizona" director Jonathan Watson with stars Luke Wilson, Elizabeth Gillies, Danny McBride, Lolli Sorenson, Kaitlin Olsen and Rosemarie Dewitt
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Actress Elizabeth Gillies, "Arizona"
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"Dead Pigs" director Cathy Yan with stars Li Meng, Zazie Beetz and David Rhysdahl
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Director Cathy Yan, "Dead Pigs"
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Actress Zazie Beetz, "Dead Pigs"
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Writer-actor Rafael Casal, director Carlos López Estrada, writer-actor Daveed Diggs, actors Janina Gavankar, Justin Chu Cory and Jasmine Cephas Jones, "Blindspotting"
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Jason Ritter, "The Tale"
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Actor Common, "The Tale"
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Isabella Amara, "The Tale"
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Writer-director-star Carlson Young, "The Blazing World"
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Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska, "Damsel"
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Actor Robert Pattinson, "Damsel"
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Actress Mia Wasikowska, "Damsel"
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Director Silas Howard, "A Kid Like Jake"
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Jim Parsons, "A Kid Like Jake"
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Actress Priyanka Chopra, "A Kid Like Jake"
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Claire Danes, "A Kid Like Jake"
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Actress Octavia Spencer, "A Kid Like Jake"
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Actors Jeffrey Wright, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and director Anthony Mandler, "Monster"
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Dominic West and Kiera Knightly, "Colette"
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Actress Kiera Knightly, "Colette"
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Actor John Cho, "Search"
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"The Kindergarten Teacher" director, Sara Colangelo and actress, Maggie Gyllenhaal
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"The Kindergarten Teacher" actress, Maggie Gyllenhaal
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"The Kindergarten Teacher" actress, Anna Baryshnikov
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Musician Aloe Blacc, "America's Musical Journey"
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Director Jessica Sanders, "End of the Line"
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Forest Whitaker, "Burden"
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Garrett Hedlund, "Burden"
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Director Talal Derki, "Of Fathers and Sons"
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Director, Boots Riley, "Sorry to Bother You"
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Lakeith Stanfield, "Sorry to Bother You"
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Armie Hammer, "Sorry to Bother You"
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Actor Jason Segel, "Come Sunday"
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Actress Condola Rashad, "Come Sunday"
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Director Stephen Maing, "Crime and Punishment"
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The young women of the "Skate Kitchen" skate collective, with director Crystal Moselle and co-star Jaden Smith, "Skate Kitchen"
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Jaden Smith, "Skate Kitchen"
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Actor Charlie Sexton, director Ethan Hawke, actress Alia Shawkat, actor Josh Hamilton, and acorr Ben Dickey, "Blaze"
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Director Ethan Hawke, “Blaze"
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Actress Alia Shawkat, “Blaze"
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Actor Ben Dickey, “Blaze"
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Charlie Sexton, “Blaze"
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"The Devil You Know" director Stephanie Soechtig and her four subjects
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Director Stephanie Soechtig, "The Devil You Know"
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Actress Hari Nef, writer-director Sam Levinson and actors Colman Domingo and Bill Skårsgard, "Assassination Nation"
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Bill Skårsgard, "Assassination Nation"
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Writer-director Sam Levinson, "Assassination Nation"
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Actor Coleman Damingo, "Assassination Nation"
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Actress Helena Howard, "Madeline's Madeline"
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Chris McGurk, CEO of Cinedigm
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Director David Wain, actors Domhnall Gleeson, Tom Lennon, and Emmy Rossum, "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"
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Emmy Rossum, "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"
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Domhnall Gleeson, "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"
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Director Brad Anderson, "Beirut"
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Raul Castillo, Jeremiah Zagar, Sheila Vand, and Justin Torres, "We the Animals"
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Author Justin Torres, "We the Animals"
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Actress Sheila Vand, "We the Animals"
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Actor Raul Castillo, "We the Animals"
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Actors Maia Mitchell and Cami Marrone with writer-director Augustine Frizzell, “Never Goin’ Back”
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Cami Morrone, “Never Goin’ Back”
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Actress Augustine Frizzell, "Never Goin' Back"
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Actress Maia Mitchell, "Never Goin' Back"
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Director Jack Henry Robbins and producer Tim Robbins, "Painting With Joan"
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Co-writer and star Franchesca Ramsey, "Franchesca"
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Producer Trey Ellis, "King in the Wilderness"
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Actors Valter Skarsgard, Lucian Charles Collier, Sky Ferreira, Jack Kilmer, director Jonas Akerlund, Wilson Gonzalez, and Rory Culkin, "Lords of Chaos"
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Actor Valter Skarsgard, "Lords of Chaos"
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Rory Culkin, "Lords of Chaos"
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"Lords of Chaos" star Wilson Gonzalez
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Director and co-writer Jonas Akerlund, "Lords of Chaos"
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Jack Kilmer, "Lords of Chaos"
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Joan Jett, "Bad Reputation"
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Director and co-writer Daryl Wein, "White Rabbit"
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Actor Graham Verchere, actor Rich Sommer, co-directors Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell, writers Matt Leslie and Stephen J. Smith, actress Tiera Skovbye, and actor Caleb Emery, "Summer of '84"
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Caleb Emery, "Summer of '84"
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Actress Tiera Skovbye, "Summer of '84"
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Actor Luis Gerardo Mendez, "Time Share"
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Actor Matthew Lillard, "Halfway There"
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Sarah Shahi, "Halfway There"
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Sundance 2018: Hilary Swank, Forest Whitaker and Armie Hammer among the stars shot by photographer Irvin Rivera in Park City
Photographed by Irvin Rivera for TheWrap at the Acura Studios