An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn

Dir: Jim Hosking

2018

*****

I feel that Jim Hosking’s cinematic mastery has been overlooked once more with 2018’s An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn. In his debut film The Greasy Strangler, Hosking deconstructed the horror genre to give us one of the best and most original horrors in decades, and now he has done the same with the rom-com. My hope is that he will now make his way through every genre in much the same vein and show the mainstream just how boring it has become. I think many find Hosking’s films hard to watch because we’ve all been trained to watch films in a certain way, so a break away from formula often throws us. I’ve seen many a scathing review of An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn and The Greasy Strangler but more often than not the criticism is incorrect. The films are finely tuned and everything is deliberate. Hosking knows exactly what he is doing and in just two films he has carved out a unique style for himself. Whether you like the style or not is a different matter but be under no illusion that he isn’t a perfectionist or a maestro of the nonsensical. Absurdist comedy always gets me going but I’m far more damning of awkward humour. I blame The Office (the original UK version) for spreading the trend of awkward for awkward sake bile that has tarred comedy for the last decade or so. It has been lapped up and flogged by the out-dated and unfunny – all of them terrible at spontaneity and the art of ad-libbing. The dialogue of The Greasy Strangler was probably the only thing about it that I had issue with but this has been corrected in An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn. It is as visually pleasing as the first film and once again the editing is ridiculously good. All these components make it what it is but the timing is everything. The Greasy Strangler clearly caught the attention of some bigger stars such as Aubrey Plaza, Emile Hirsch, Craig Robinson, Jemaine Clement and Matt Berry and they are all clear fans of Hosking’s unique wit. That said, it is only Plaza, Berry and especially Clement who know what to do with it. There is nothing wrong with either Hirsch or Robinson’s performances, it’s just that the other three leads absolutely excel and the task they are given. There are no real punchlines in the film because there are no real jokes. Anyone felt let-down by the ending should realise that it is in fact the same ending of nearly every rom-com ever made. Hoskings is clearly poking fun at the mainstream and is mocking it. He hasn’t just deconstructed the formula, he has exaggerated it to the point where it isn’t immediately recognisable. The satire isn’t aggressive or antagonistic either and I would argue that the ending is even more uplifting and feel-good as the most popular of mainstream feel-good rom-coms. It’s certainly not a smug film but I can see why it doesn’t appeal to many, it is challenging at times but I think if you just go along with it you’ll be pleasantly surprised and once you ‘get it’ its rather wonderful. While deconstruction, exaggeration and reinvention are not original concepts in the world of cinema, I do wonder whether Hoskin’s attention to all that is stilted and somewhat bereft of purpose is, at least to this degree. I don’t think you need a degree in film appreciation to understand what Hoskin is trying to achieve, nor do I believe you have to have an over-sized funny bone to appreciate the humour but what you do need is the understanding that An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn is far from an experiment of the work of someone who hasn’t a clue how films work. It’ll always be regarded as a ‘cult’ movie, not necessarily a popular one but a cult movie that I am very happy to be a cult follower of. I love a good comedy but it is very rare that a contemporary film ever makes me laugh. I find myself laughing more often at older films I discover than anything made in the last decade. I think the so called gross-out comedy genre acted as a cancer to the genre for the last twenty years and now finally there are directors who are discovering the correct balance that understand the recipes of good comedy and are trying out fresh ingredients. I’ve seen this and The Greasy Strangler dismissed as being dumb, stupid, and a series of awkward errors but the opposite is true. Both films are original, innovative, challenging (in a good way) and are meticulous in their structure, detail and intention. It is brilliant but the final five minutes of the film are particularly magical. It is one of my favorite films of 2018 and Jim Hoskings is now one of the directors I am most excited about. An absurdist masterpiece.