over 3 years ago

Claire in Motion

a review by iieeef

This film follows Claire and her son in the month after Claire's husband goes missing. Judging from the performance by lead actress Betsy Brandt though, you'd believe Claire never actually met the man as she has so little invested in his disappearance. With its deadly pace and quiet landscape, this film never quite picks up enough steam to level a feeling of honesty about the missing, and possibly dead, husband. Instead the co-writing, co-directing team get so distracted with a relatively uninteresting wife/mistress rivalry between Claire and her husband's colleague, that this turns into another story of an emotionally unavailable wife pitted against a younger woman who feels herself a bit too much. The husband's disappearance, it ultimately seems, is an absurd catalyst for a cliche set of circumstances. Deemed so unimportant by the writers in fact (SPOILER ALERT), the husband's disappearance is never even solved. With an underwhelming emotional landscape and a maddeningly unsatisfying ending, this film manages to bring very little to the table.