On the face of it, Lucy doesn’t seem to be the sort of one that would go on a religious retreat. She’d most likely agree with that herself. However she’d prefer to be, and so she struggles by way of the enforced silences and the sharing periods, hoping to achieve a sort of enlightenment she doesn’t actually consider in. An embittered former teen actor, performed by Jennifer Connelly with the scorched, brittle air of 1 steadily trying out of well mannered society, her thorny aura is an sick match for the costly Oregon sanctuary she’s signed up for, all hushed meditation and touchy-feely belief workout routines, and this energy-based battle provides Alice Englert‘s unusual, alluring satirical drama “Unhealthy Behaviour” a direct pull of intrigue — vibes so discordantly violent, one feels they’ve to offer solution to one thing bodily and drastic.

On the movie’s tough midpoint, they do — in ways in which verify the startling, admirable severity and bluntness of Englert’s first characteristic as a director, and likewise deliver it to a head that its barely softer, extra conventionally oddball second half can’t dwell as much as. At first the movie alternates the tales of Lucy and her grownup daughter Dylan (performed by Englert herself) to type a bifurcated portrait of ladies whose needs are more and more incompatible with their chosen surroundings; as soon as it brings the characters collectively, for a examine of cautious household bonding underneath dire circumstances, it loses its crisp dramatic and thematic definition. Nonetheless, that is an unique and auspicious work from the New Zealander — carrying at the least some shared DNA with the ashy black comedy of early movies by Englert’s mom Jane Campion (who makes a quick cameo look right here).

“Unhealthy Behaviour” is notable, too, as an unusually rangy and dangerous showcase for Connelly, an actor who could have lately scored career-high field workplace in “Prime Gun: Maverick,” however whose pensive, nervy display screen presence has been too not often examined by Hollywood within the 20 years since she received an Oscar for “A Stunning Thoughts.” Right here, she’s subtly however vividly agitated from the leap, already bristling with quiet malaise and discomfort in her personal pores and skin once we meet her driving to Oregon, calling Dylan from the automobile to warn her that she’s going to be out of attain for, nicely, nonetheless lengthy a paid-for epiphany takes to reach. Dylan, a film stuntwoman at work on a shoot in New Zealand, sounds neither shocked nor involved: The dispassionate tone between them makes clear that mom and daughter are at the least alike of their self-containment.

The retreat is each spartan and elevated, presided over by a religious chief — the unprepossessingly named Elon — who’s disarmingly easy, but in addition serene in a means that implies some method of superior information. Eschewing cult-leader cliché for a plummy on a regular basis friendliness that finally circles spherical to sinister, Ben Whishaw cleverly performs Elon as equal elements guru and grifter: His counsel is usually apparent, however what the individual wants to listen to simply the identical. Englert’s script avoids straightforward mockery of religious in search of and people who pursue it, however does discover cool, splintery comedy within the notion of one-size-fits-all therapeutic methods, which alienate Lucy farther from a bunch wherein she already feels unsettled.

The majority of her aggravation lands, not solely undeservingly, on new arrival Beverly (a canny Dasha Nekrasova), a vacuous movie star mannequin who overtly fears the lack of her youth and affect; as somebody now shorn of each, Lucy can supply her harsher dwelling truths than Elon. Starting as passive-aggressive earlier than the “passive” half is quite boldly chipped away, this flinty, typically very humorous standoff between the 2 ladies provides Lucy’s half of the narrative a snap and pressure that Dylan’s, principally revolving round her tentative romance with unavailable actor Elmore (Marlon Williams), lacks. However the two portraits are complementary nonetheless, every perceptive concerning the stability ladies are anticipated to seek out between emotional honesty and smiling reserve. Simon Worth’s curt modifying sharply exposes these parallels, whereas Matt Henley’s chilly, misty lensing typically situates mom and daughter in the identical gentle and air, at the same time as they’re supposedly half a world aside. (The entire manufacturing was, the truth is, shot in New Zealand.)

Following the movie’s exhilaratingly surprising climax, Lucy and Dylan’s eventual reunion turns it right into a staider, talkier affair. However even then, a number of the discuss is witty and instructive, constructing towards a decision that, if not joyful, feels conciliatory and hard-earned, whereas true to its characters’ flaws and vanities. “You’re going to should forgive me,” Lucy says to her daughter, “after which forgive your self for taking so lengthy to forgive me.” Non secular enlightenment thus juts up in opposition to poisonous narcissism — recognizing that individuals can solely change a lot, Englert’s debut finds what crumpled catharsis it will probably in the very best of their dangerous moments.