Driving to a semi-silent non secular retreat in Oregon, a former teen star named Lucy (Jennifer Connelly) telephones her daughter to say she’ll be off the grid, and arrives at her wooded vacation spot. The retreat’s signage is sufficient to make you surprise if it’s real or a rip-off: “Loveland Ranch. Foothills of Mt. Hypnosis.” That skepticism is enhanced by the merch on the market within the nook of the room the place the non secular chief, Elon (Ben Whishaw), runs his classes. Is he a charlatan or real? The query is intentional. In her first function as author and director, Alice Englert expertly finds the road between satire and sincerity, mocking the slipperiness of the spiritual-enlightenment business whereas acknowledging the intense intentions of the individuals — on this case very well-heeled prospects — who assume it’s not less than price a attempt.

With Connelly and Whishaw sharply defining their sophisticated characters, Unhealthy Behaviour is, for many of its working time, participating, droll and shrewdly noticed. Englert has an unique voice, a tremendous eye for detailed visuals and an obvious present for working with actors. She is, in fact, higher often known as an actress, most not too long ago in Starz’s Harmful Liaisons and notably within the collection High of the Lake: China Lady, directed by her mom, Jane Campion. However this deft movie establishes her stable credentials as a filmmaker in her personal proper. It’s too quirky to look like a business smash, however ought to discover an viewers that may admire its successful darkish humor.  

The scenes of Lucy and Elon on the retreat are intercut with these of her daughter, Dylan (Englert), a stuntwoman engaged on set in New Zealand, first seen being fake-choked within the woods by an actor she’s turning into romantically concerned with. The cinematographer Matt Henley captures the wide-shot rural great thing about each the retreat and the film set. (All the movie was made in New Zealand.)

The satirical scenes on the retreat are essentially the most bracing, with Connelly and Whishaw’s modulated performances reflecting the movie’s stability between comedy and drama. Elon looks like a daily man, not some mystic. At his first group assembly, most individuals within the room are open-eyed and quizzical, whereas Lucy’s eyes are closed. Connelly exhibits us the face of somebody who needs to consider she’ll discover the peace and understanding she got here for. All through, she reveals each Lucy’s genuine want to be enlightened and her impatient, typically illiberal character.

She is very, and understandably, irritated when a brand new arrival exhibits up, a younger mannequin named Beverly (Dasha Nekrasova) carrying a Louis Vuitton bag, all poses and narcissism. Her first transfer is to ask Lucy to take her {photograph}. When Elon asks the group to “share a disgrace” — one of many screenplay’s withering satiric touches — Beverly says she’s afraid that her youth will fade. “It should,” Elon says, not too helpfully. He later screams at Lucy “Don’t hope!” following it up extra calmly with “Be.” Perhaps he’s simply unhealthy as a guru. Whishaw makes the character enigmatic till he isn’t.

Dylan’s scenes present broader comedian aid, as she practices tumbling down the steps, lunges at her maybe-boyfriend with a lance, and places ice packs on her muscle groups in her resort room at night time. (Campion has a really temporary cameo as a health care provider treating Dylan’s bruises.) Her plot and Lucy’s start to merge late within the story, with an train wherein Elon asks the group to role-play as moms and infants. The movie takes a flip, fulfilling the very unhealthy conduct of the title. Lucy might have had a breakthrough, or arrived at her breaking level, or perhaps was extra damaged than we noticed all alongside.

At that stage the movie guarantees to go excessive in a delightfully off-kilter method, solely to have Dylan, with private issues of her personal, fly to see Lucy in Oregon as an alternative. Unhealthy Behaviour settles into an earnest, if fraught, story in regards to the mother-daughter reunion. The issue with this part isn’t the disjunction or shift in tone, however the sheer talkiness of the scenes between Lucy and Dylan. They clarify a lot of their relationship and background to us, whereas thrashing it out, with wildly completely different recollections of the previous. Connelly and Englert are convincing, however right here Englert’s screenplay lets her down.

The movie’s press notes say, “Though Unhealthy Behaviour just isn’t particularly about Alice Englert’s relationship together with her personal mom, the movie was impressed by the quite a few non secular retreats she’s attended over time alongside her mom.” That clarification is each a method of emphasizing that the story is a fiction, and a tactful recognition that the movie will inevitably land within the shadow of Campion’s good profession. Finest to not be too involved with real-life parallels although. This glowing, imaginative little movie works by itself phrases.