Review: Fay Grim

A few months ago I watched Hal Hartley’s “Henry Fool“ (played by Thomas Jay Ryan), the story of Henry who appears out of nowhere and warps the lives of Simon and Fay Grim, played by James Urbaniak and Parker Posey respectively. I loved it, in part because Henry Fool struck me as something of a slightly flaky version of Henry Miller for modern times. In that film, Henry’s life revolves around the dream of great literature, a dream he passes on to Simon, becoming an inspiration that leads Simon to the writing of a body of work powerful and moving enough to cut through the emotional armoring of anyone who read it.

So when I’d heard that Hal Hartley had returned to the same story ten years later, with the same actors, I knew I had to see it. I didn’t bother to read any reviews or spoilers either. The best way to go into a Hal Hartley film is without expectations, ready to see what he’s intending to bring to the screen. Expectations will only get in the way, which makes reviewing this film without trampling any plot points or leaving behind any spoilers a somewhat tricky task. The everyday contempt between Fay and Henry who had been forced into marriage by pregnancy has apparently transformed in the interim between the movies. Fay’s demeanor in the gap between the narratives has changed as well, an underlying sophistication perhaps engendered by the funds from Simon’s royalty checks.

Suffice it to say, in Fay Grim we discover the themes of a literature capable of wreaking profound effects, only this time the work is the Confessions of Henry Fool, not the poems of Simon Grim, and the effects are cultural, not personal. In the ten years that had passed, Simon Grim has been imprisoned for aiding and abetting Henry Fool in his escape from the country. As a result, rumors of the works of Henry Fool have been circulating in the popular media, and the publisher of Simon’s poetry is seeking to publish the collection of Fool’s work. However, all is not as it seems, as it seems that these works aren’t simply the purple turgid prose that they’d been insinuated to be, but rather that they are a carefully encoded accounting of secrets vital to the national interest of not just the American governments, but Israeli, Russian, and French interests as well.

Jeff Goldblum just fucking delivers as Agent Fullbright, a CIA operative who approaches Fay Grim with the news that Henry Fool has been reported dead, sending her to France to retrieve two of his notebooks that had been recovered by French police. He’s a strong addition to a returning cast, and Elina Löwensohn’s portrayal of the stewardess Bebe is solid, compelling, and a delightful contrast to Fay Grim’s buttoned-down composure.

Seriously, there’s so many levels, so many layers of cues (both implied in the photographic directions and subtly placed in the audio) that you’ll need to watch this at least twice to catch all the allusions. The Chilean conflict, for example, a reference to September 11th, 1973, or the implication that Henry Fool might be an ancient alchemist, brought to the surface momentarily then dismissed seconds later. Everything, including the ending, plays with that ambiguous nature of truth and the frustrating neurosis of trying to be certain.

So grab the torrent here while you can and watch this shit on altertube if streaming a torrent is too arcane to bother with at the moment. Or, alternatively, you could go out and buy Fay Grim and Henry Fool and watch them in order, because I’m betting you’ll be wanting to show this to your friends:

And for those of you who want more… Greylodge is also hosting 7 of Hal Hartley’s film shorts and an interview as well.