Neil Jordan’s Greta begins as a surprisingly dull drama before ultimately deteriorating into a laughable, maddening thriller. For the Oscar-winning creator of The Crying Game, this is an embarrassing comedown, his worst film since High Spirits.
Chloe Grace Moritz plays Frances, a restaurant hostess mourning the loss of her mother. Her academic father (Canadian Stratford Festival vet Colm Feore) has already moved on. (In a deleted scene, a year after his wife’s death, he already has a new girlfriend.) As a result, their once close relationship is now strained. She dreads his phone calls and avoids returning them as much as possible.
During the opening titles, as she’s about to depart her subway car, she spots a leather purse left behind on a seat and grabs it. When she approaches the lost and found, it’s closed, so she takes it home. Her colonics-and-yoga-obsessed loft roommate Erica (Maika Monroe) dumps out the contents and isn’t impressed. She also tries to steal the cash.
But Frances knows what she must do.
The purse belongs to a mysterious old woman named Greta (a phenomenally miscast Isabelle Huppert). When Frances arrives at her suspiciously isolated home, she seems friendly enough. But we know better than Frances.
In the very first shot of the film, as Greta leaves that same subway car, it’s blatantly obvious she left behind the purse on purpose. (How come no one rushes to give it back to her?) A vulnerable, naive Frances gets sucked right into Greta’s manipulative song-and-dance about her dead husband, her dead dog and her estranged daughter. Longing for a replacement mother figure, she totally buys in. Greta tests her loyalty. Frances stupidly proclaims it. “My friends call me chewing gum. I tend to stick around.” What a dope.
When Frances offers to help her find a new pet, Greta first demurs then later conveniently changes her mind. At the pound, Greta settles on a sad looking pooch who’s on the verge of being put to sleep. How she’s allowed to adopt it when the animal won’t even eat her treats and does nothing but whimper around her is beyond me.
Accepting a dinner invitation at her home, everything changes when Frances makes a hilarious discovery. It’s hilarious because it’s so dumb. That’s not a good hiding place.
Unable to hide her suddenly sickening feelings, Frances skips dessert and hightails it out of there. This gives a concerned Greta an excuse to continually try to contact her. This sudden change in the young woman’s attitude arouses deep suspicion. There are dozens and dozens of phone calls that go mostly unreturned. Then the stalking begins which provokes more laughter. Look out the restaurant window and there’s Greta. Walk off the apartment elevator and there’s Greta again.
Despite repeated attempts to tell her to fuck off without actually saying the words, Greta is unrelenting. She won’t take no for an answer. One such encounter sounds like a break-up that doesn’t take.
There are the usual, frustrating scenes where Frances is informed by the reliably useless authorities that Greta’s actions aren’t illegal and don’t meet the criteria for unlawful harassment which, of course, is total nonsense. (A possible restraining order will take months to implement and therefore, never pursued.) In one scene, she sends Frances photos of Erica she snaps while quietly following her around Brooklyn, occasionally reminding her through text messages of her “betrayal”. Frances belatedly realizes she didn’t really need that phone tutorial after all. The technologically proficient Greta is hooked on her Facebook page. She loves being bored, apparently.
Most ridiculous of all is the scene where Greta returns to Frances’ restaurant expecting to be served. The crazy old lady makes such a big scene she gets carried out and straitjacketed onto a gurney right into an ambulance. But she’s immediately released from custody (Frances figures out as much when she calls for information that’s not freely given) and this silly nightmare continues.
Jordan, who directed and co-wrote the screenplay, surely knew he was making a predictable pile of trash so there’s a bizarre sequence where he tries to subvert our expectations and fails miserably.
Erica, the roommate, who initially warns Frances that Greta is oddly clingy, now gives her incredibly bad advice. She instructs her worried friend to meet with her tormentor, tell her she’s going away for a while to work on herself but when she comes back, they’ll definitely see each other again, which is a big whopper even an imbecile could spot.
Greta is not an imbecile. A professional bullshitter always sees right through a panicked amateur.
Before Frances has even packed, there’s the old lady puttering around in her apartment (how did she break in?) as the young woman suddenly feels dazed. Dragged out of there and dumped into the back of a cab, they’re soon at Greta’s home with Erica close to completely passing out.
Then suddenly, she awakens and is back at the loft, as though nothing has happened. As her dad arrives to pick her up for their impromptu vacation, she walks into the elevator and instead of stopping on the first floor, it keeps dropping. Oh, and it also tries to squish her.
She awakens again, but this time, she’s locked in a toy chest at Greta’s place. Come on.
Now realizing she’s been kidnapped, Frances’ dad turns to a private investigator (longtime Jordan collaborator Stephen Rea) for assistance. As soon as he arrives at Greta’s, you know he’s a fucking goner.
The second Frances becomes Greta’s prisoner, the movie becomes a bad parody of Misery. Like the much scarier Annie Wilkes, we learn she too was once a nurse who shouldn’t have been hired in the first place. (We also discover she’s not really French (despite being played by a French actress) and there’s a very good reason her daughter never responds to her frequent cards and letters.) You wonder why it’s taking so long for a young, healthy woman to break free from her elderly captor, especially when, in the beginning, she’s not tied up, just locked in that secret room behind the piano. Look at all the objects at her disposal. Maybe break that chair over Greta’s head instead.
Then a finger gets chopped off and a rolling pin becomes an effective weapon. But instead of finishing the job, which would be smart and buy more time, someone decides to run for it, forgetting you need a key to get out the front door. There’s a discovery in the basement and then it’s back to the secret room where there is no chance of a solitary escape.
By the time we reach the pitiful end, once again a glorious opportunity arises to finish this once and for all. But no. That would make too much sense. One must always allow room for a possible sequel.
Greta was released by Focus Features, the faux indie arm of Universal Pictures. It starts off rather slow and tedious before suddenly traversing down formula thriller avenue. But it’s often not thrilling at all. Isabelle Huppert is the absolute wrong actress to pull this off. She’s just not terrifying, not in the slightest, even when she’s playing stern piano teacher. It’s extremely hard to believe she has gotten away with this lonely old lady act for as long as she has. (How come no one is looking for all her other victims?) Plus, she’s sloppy. Really sloppy.
Consider the scene with the private investigator. If Stephen Rea’s character was more on the ball, he would immediately ask why she’s only wearing one glove. He would also demand to know what’s with that constant noise behind the piano. (Why didn’t she noise-proof the secret room?) When Greta goes upstairs briefly, he takes too long to investigate. Inevitably, he pays the price for his sluggishness. Shouldn’t he have anticipated being attacked? He waits until he’s nearly passed out before pulling out his piece. Dick Cheney has better aim.
Chloe Grace Moritz is an appealing lead but her character is too dense to take seriously. Huppert isn’t really charming enough in the early scenes to warrant such immediate affection. And when her true nature is exposed, you’re not even remotely unsettled. Maika Monroe, who plays the roommate, is too obnoxious and unfunny. Stephen Rea was far more memorable in his Oscar-nominated turn in The Crying Game. And as for Colm Feore, he’s clearly slumming here. This ain’t Shakespeare.
But Greta is a tragedy all the same, just not the way the filmmakers intended.
Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, June 30, 2019
2:37 a.m.
THE WRITINGS OF DENNIS EARL 