★★★ (3 out of 4)
I remember an interview with Chris Rock in which the ace comic turned filmmaker said he was thinking of what he’d like to write and direct and act in for his next movie, his fourth. He hadn’t done one since the terrific “Top Five,” 12 years ago. What came to mind was something along the lines of 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” in which his buddy Adam Sandler gave the performance of his life as a gambler on the worst day of his life. It was like watching a nervous breakdown in real time. Rock thought, “Why not do that with a woman?”
That idea has now grown into “Misty Green,” an indie film done for $5 million, chump change by Hollywood standards. In the title role of an L.A. actress desperate for a comeback is Rosalind Eleazar, who delivers a tour de force sure to knock you sideways. Misty is a gifted singer and actress. What a shame her greater talent is for self-sabotage.
And talk about a bad day! Her sugar daddy just died and his wife is evicting her from a luxury apartment with a Pacific view. The Emmy she won in 2008 is starting to look shopworn. Her bipolar brother (Daniel Kaluya) is just out of a mental ward and getting worse. Her hot temper gets her kicked off movie sets (she punched a wardrobe person in the face), not to mention her addictions to drugs, sex and the next high. Her agent (Topher Grace) says he can’t even book her on “Law & Order.” Her sleazeball friend (a never-creepier Adam Driver) offers sex work in Dubai to be strange for change. But Misty wants to play the Diana Ross character in a reboot of “Dreamgirls.” Good luck with that.
It’s not a new story. You can tell by the cobwebs. But director Chris Rock and his dazzling star Rosalind Eleazar keep you riveted by the sheer force of their commitment.
Rock really puts Misty through the gauntlet. He hasn’t lost his gift for observational humor or visuals that tell their own story as one-percenters often walk over the unhoused to get to their next elitist gig. It’s not a new story. You can tell by the cobwebs. But Rock and his dazzling star, best known as the tough MI5 operative grieving for her partner on “Slow Horses,” keep you riveted by the sheer force of their commitment.
Born to a British mother and a Ghanaian father, who served as Ghana's Minister of State for Agriculture and later Health, Rosalind, 38, alternated stage and TV work—she led Harlan Coben’s Netflix miniseries “Missing You” as Detective Inspector Kat Donovan—and made her film debut in 2019’s “The Personal History of David Copperfield.” But her performance in “Misty Green” is the stuff awards are made of.
There is humor because without it, Misty’s descent would be hard to bear. Rock gives himself the choice role of Jordan, Misty’s lifeline. He’s a director who once fired Misty for breaking bad, but her talent floors him, and he’s the man in charge of that “Dreamgirls” remake. And he might just love her. Nearly everyone else in the piranha pond this film swims in seems incapable of that emotion. Is Jordan too good to be true? ‘Fraid so.
It would be one thing if the script just told us to take Misty’s talent on faith. But Eleazar proves it. There are times her face sags from the weight that race, class and ageism pile on it. Misty is 40 when options really get squeezed for women in Hollywood. And Eleazar lets us see it all. Hers is not a vain, hide-the-cracks performance. It’s real with the scars to prove it.
Luckily, so is her artistry. Eleazar’s take on “One Night Only,” the emo ballad from “Dreamgirls,” goes places the song has never previously explored. And in a Hollywood lounge bar, she does things with Radiohead’s “Creep” that are near miraculous.
As a director, Rock isn’t always successful at batting away the clichés inherent in his “Star is Reborn” tale. It doesn’t matter because his bullshit detector is still in fine working order and he’s given the magnificent Eleazar a showcase to die for. On a studio lot, dwarfed by a classic 1950’s billboard featuring an impossibly gorgeous Marilyn Monroe in “The Seven Year Itch,” Eleazar lets us see the expectations put on Misty in an industry that casually destroys the goddesses it creates.
And yet Misty strides forward. To where? The movie won’t say. Rock is clearly not optimistic. But the fire Eleazar puts in Misty’s eye is not easily doused. She keeps you hanging on. The same goes for the movie.