It is a cheap shot to make fun of Donald Trump for his weight. He is a reprehensible figure on several fronts, but his weight has nothing to do with them. It isn’t connected to his views or personality or his various bigotries. And yet, liberal satirists seemingly can’t get enough of it -their caricatures of him accentuate this feature and even some of their direct jokes hone in on it. And it begs the question if some of the vitriol is misplaced, or worse that those making such jokes see the excess vileness of character as an excuse to get away with a less respectful form of mockery.
And I had this feeling watching The Front Room, an A24 horror film from Max and Sam Eggers (the brothers of Robert), about the disturbing relationship between a manipulative yet decrepit old evangelical woman and her black non-Christian daughter-in-law. And it is a movie that at times seems to couch an utter disgust with the elderly in the veneer of criticizing a horrible old racist. And it relates a bad taste the movie goes to again and again.
This figure, Solange, is played by Kathryn Hunter -the sensational character actress from The Tragedy of Macbeth and Poor Things, and whom the Eggers rightly recognized as someone who deserves a larger platform. Ancient and withering, she stipulates in the aftermath of her husband’s death that a substantial inheritance for her estranged stepson Norman (Andrew Burnap) comes with her moving in with him and his pregnant wife Belinda (Brandy Norwood). Initially considerate and accommodating, Belinda soon becomes deeply troubled and worn down by Solange’s controlling personality and extreme care-giving requirements.
The movie is very quick to contrast Belinda's study of African religious folklore and iconography with Solange's deep unwavering Christian dogmatism. And it gears towards a confrontation on those grounds long before there appears to be any ill will between them. The tension is set by Norman's assumption she would disapprove of his marriage to a black woman and later Belinda finding a Daughters of the Confederacy membership amongst her belongings. It is clear that Solange is a deeply racist person, but outside of one explosion that is hardly characterized by torrential hate, the Eggers brothers choose to illustrate it through the subtleties of her encroaching control over Belinda's life and her child's. There's a lot of stark reference to Rosemary's Baby, as Belinda's grasp of reality is thrown into question under the influence Solange seems to exert -and of course a scene of dubious legitimacy where she and her friends paw at and faun over the child in uncomfortable religious fervour.
But The Front Room can’t conjure up the paranoia and enigma of Rosemary’s Baby, no matter what it does in its more surreal, less literal sequences, such as Belinda’s dream of witchcraft or a vision of Solange as Madonna to her infant complete with Renaissance fresco -because it bogs itself down too much in sheer unceasing disdain for Solange on just all cylinders, except really for the one most deserving of critique. By making her racism and general bigotry more of an undercurrent, a greater emphasis is made of her infuriatingly stubborn and entitled personality, gradually evolving into a juvenile neediness intentionally meant to parallel the baby she seeks to be a “real mother” to; and just a general dehumanization of and disgust with her body. The former point is a fine if ultimately tired and irritable substitute for her beliefs and positions -though it goes to cartoonish extremes by the last act that the movie isn’t able to pull off in concert with its tone. But it’s the latter point that most sticks unpleasantly, especially in the way the Eggers have it supersede her every other trait.
Honing in on her gaunt demeanour, frail bony limbs, wrinkles, and crutches, every solid mark against Solange's character is underscored by a counterpart physical ailment -the insinuation being a sickly, ugliness of appearance and age to match an ugliness of personality. It's a storytelling shorthand that has been in vogue for centuries, but the Eggers lean into it in quite a mean way, as they deliberately associate issues of age with her vileness, and invite the audience to reel in disgust with her -particularly in the frequency with which they quite graphically showcase her incontinence. Obviously it's a device that further links her with infancy and the burden and theme of inadequate motherhood tormenting Belinda, but it is also played in such a way that is frankly gross; juvenile in how it trades on shock value and viscerally shames any elders suffering from such an ailment. And poor Kathryn Hunter, who performs with intense dedication and physical vigour, is forced to be the subject of this abuse.
Brandy makes for an okay lead, though her performance isn't much inspired and too subtle too much of the time. This comes mostly down to the script though, which can be frustratingly disinterested in her character as it just paints her as a black Rosemary clone. Outside of Solange, the film tries to extract some tension from the relationship between Belinda and Norman -and in particular the attempts by Solange to turn Norman against her. There’s the thread of something there in Norman’s abuse at her hands and a sense of him reverting under her control -Belinda has a vision at one point of him suckling at Solange. But whether it’s that Burnap isn’t convincing or the Eggers’ indecisiveness over how far to take it, that thematic point doesn’t ever rise to seriousness, and certainly not next to the forced inflations of Norman and Belinda’s rift.
The most interesting things in the movie are those occasional pieces of surreal, thematically intense imagery, and the air of claustrophobia that envelops Belinda the more drastic things get. The suffocating feeling of that collection of people descended on her, a Tarkovsky-esque pan through a fish-eye mirror as she talks with a priest insistent on Solange’s good influence. But these don’t reflect the movie’s effect or the ultimately mundane things it has to say about religious fundamentalism or generational and racial conflicts. The Front Room again seems mostly just a movie about denigrating an elderly woman through the trappings of a familiar horror mood and a veneer of social conscientiousness easy to get behind. Max Eggers co-wrote the brilliant The Lighthouse with his brother Robert. There’s surely talent in that family besides Robert, but Sam and Max have not yet honed their taste enough to branch out.
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