Issue #82: Packing a Punchline 🥊
Bottoms + The Killer
We’re back again! And this time we’re going at it. It’s been a rough week, so we’re seeking comfort before we head back into the fray. Dissociate and chill as it were. Sublimation is the order of the day.
First, Cate tackles the absurdist nature of Emma Seligman’s raunchy teen comedy Bottoms. Then Zosha discusses the suave monotone of David Fincher’s moody new film The Killer.
Take care of yourselves, and happy movie yelling.
Cate on Bottoms
What happens if you mix the brutal archness of Glee with the silly indignation of Book Smart, the sharpness of Do Revenge, the sincerity of Moxie, and the perfectly 90s brand of anti-feminist feminism of Jawbreaker? Well, you get Bottoms, the absurdist second feature from director Emma Seligman.
The premise is simple: two lesbian virgins and best friends PJ and Josie, start an all-female fight club at their school as a front to get closer to the cheerleaders they have crushes on. Their plan works, but when a handful of careless lies are exposed, it threatens to damage the new relationships they’ve built with the girls who needed the club’s safe space to process the traumas they’ve experienced as young women who are coming of age.
Starring Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebri as PJ and Josie, and written by Sennott and Seligman, Bottoms is a pitch-perfect farce about budding sexuality taken to the extreme. The film’s unrelentingly dry tone contributes to its playfully ridiculous feel — it is at once the thing and a send-up of the thing. Teen sex romps have a formula for a reason. And by leaning into the usual tropes, queering them, and following them to their logical end, we get something that makes us both laugh and roll our eyes. By the film’s end, it is squarely in the realm of fantasy, as — spoiler — the girls murder most of an opposing school’s football team to save their own quarterback from coming into contact with pineapple juice. He’s allergic you see, and the other team is trying to murder him, per the tradition of the 50-year rivalry between the schools. Just normal teenage stuff, right?
In the world of Bottoms, every adult is an incompetent rube incapable of appropriately interacting with the teenagers in their orbit. Every football player is a malicious, self-absorbed meathead. And every girl is an insecure mess desperately struggling to find a solid foothold to build their identity around. The magic of Bottoms is that it lets them find precisely that when they come together. They girls in the club are seeking community and recognition, and Seligman expertly manages the tonal shifts of the girls’ earnest plea to be seen, with the inherent ridiculousness of a gym teacher declaring himself a feminist ally for doing precisely nothing.
And the film is carried by its two lead performances, particularly Edebri, who brings a sweet desperation to Josie’s horny quest for sexual conquest. Shy and criminally awkward, she hides behind PJ’s more domineering nature, allowing herself to be pulled along on a journey she isn’t brave enough to take herself. But as her arc progresses, she grows more confident, especially as she begins to capture the attention of her crush Isabel (Havana Rose Liu). It’s lovely then that when the film’s driving action is over, she gets to have the Big Kiss™ that so many straight leads before her have enjoyed — a lovely moment of self-actualization and stilted romance. It’s notable too that neither half of the couple is white. For too long, that part of the equation has been mandatory, and it’s nice to see that challenged in such an odd little queer film.
The film is funny, smart and near-imbecilic all at once — something that I daresay is close to impossible to achieve. But Seligman does achieve it, and shows significant growth in her creative vision since her 2020 debut feature Shiva Baby. Bottoms is well worth a watch, and it’s a worthy entry into the teen movie canon.
Zosha on The Killer
The Killer (Michael Fassbender) might be the funniest movie protagonist of the year, though from meeting him you’d never know it. On the surface level, Fassbender’s Killer — that is, in fact, his whole name in the credits — is all silent sizzle; the kind of imposing you get from staring down a brick wall you’re trying to run through. Inside, he’s all zen, meting out nuggets of wisdom like the audiobook of a jaded, weary assassin self-help book. This would be a potent combination for the character if his most centered and professional moments internally weren’t always followed by him getting his ass beat.
This is the delightful tension David Fincher is always playing with in The Killer, a movie that wouldn’t work without any part of itself — but because it has a killer (look I’m sorry) lineup of talent behind it works so well. On paper, it’s possible Andrew Kevin Walker’s script reads far too robotic. But in Fassbender’s hands — and, more specifically, his finely tuned American monotone — it’s smooth as silk. His vocal performance is incredible, all flat voiceover that betrays so little of his character while his thoughts let on much more. There’s a version of this character that feels in on the joke, a wink from the performer that this man is selectively focused to a fault. But Fassbender keeps a tight lid on all that; The Killer isn’t even aware of the joke. He is single minded and focused, an alpha male fantasy that Aggro Dr1ft could never dream of. And then the script drops another joke or another (literal) punchline, and it’s all masterfully undercut. To call the script robotic is just to recognize that it understands the exact story it’s trying to tell.
Which is what’s fun about The Killer: You can read into its muted sleekness any number of metaphors about his career, or callbacks to his past films. But the result is unbothered by that, more intent on looking forward and building itself up than trying to work through some older material. The Killer feels like Fincher in conversation with consumerism or corporate culture in the same way Fight Club did, but less about being in your face about the fucked upness of it all, and more highlighting the way it makes asses of us all. Here’s a methodical hit man, expertly disposing of bodies and stalking his prey, and he’s stuck ordering supplies from Amazon or dealing with car rental counters just like the rest of us. Fincher isn’t searching for a laugh so much as showing how easy it is to find one without even trying.
In the age of fast fashion, it can be easy to take craftsmanship for granted (if you can even find it). The industry churns out so many “basics” that you can forget (sorry Miranda) that the good stuff, the really well-made stuff, looks totally normal; the sheer level of competency belying the skill and effort that made it all come together to actually be the ideal in the first place. This is exactly how The Killer feels — craftsmanship so skillfully smooth it almost feels baseline until you get a chance to pull at the seams. When you’re watching the movie it’s engaging and amusing, never afraid to switch gears on a dime and remind you that Fincher could’ve made the whole movie brutal fights and that would’ve been sick as hell too. For me, its masterstroke comes at the end — which I won’t spoil here. Suffice it to say: As The Killer zeroes in on his target, the movie is smart enough to know exactly who he is and what he needs to do. He may not have a ton to say, but the movie lets his actions speak for himself.
Assorted Internet Detritus
CATE: HBO brass is very silly, Halloween is over but good horror movies are forever, Marvel may be shitting the bed, romcoms ruined millennial women, and a little bit of Christmas joy, and some moral clarity in a trying time.
I’ve even got a little pop culture treat. The podcast I produce, Even The Rich is having our first-ever live-streamed show next Wednesday 11/8 at 5pm PST/8pm ET. We’ll be doing a deep dive into all things #Scandoval, and previewing a brand-new episode you won’t find anywhere else. (Unless you sign up to Wondery+ that is…)
ZOSHA: Shoemakers on how DeSantis is at the very least (also) clearly lying about wearing poorly fitted lifts. Guts good! Happy open enrollment season: Why dental insurance is different from other insurance. Some more thoughts on NYFF I loved.
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Zosha + Cate <3
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