Stanleyville – Movie Review
89 Minutes, Not Rated
Written by Rob Benvie and Maxwell McCabe-Lokos
Directed by Maxwell McCabe-Lokos
**NOTE: this post has been updated with audio.**
Synopsis:
One fine day, prim and proper Maria (Wuest) decides to unceremoniously walk away from her boring job, her inept husband, and her obnoxious daughter. Moments after doing so, she’s invited to participate in a bizarre and—as it turns out—potentially very dangerous sweepstakes contest, the rules of which are seemingly unknown to even its organizers, competing with a collection of idiosyncratic characters for the chance to win true enlightenment… and one slightly used habanero-orange compact sport utility vehicle. Dark as night and deadpan hilarious, with every fresh escalation progressing according to a warped logic that makes perfect (non)sense.
If that set-up doesn’t get you, man, I don’t know what to tell you.
Look, we’ve all been at the point in our lives where just walking out, throwing away our wallets/purses, and walking away seems appropriate, even sane. With that set-up, Stanleyville takes an abrupt left turn into the surreal.
Games without apparent plans, rules, or goals, all scored at the seeming whim of the homunculus who recruited the players, random commentary, all within the confines of a blasted out apartment more akin to East Germany than Quebec?
But I’m going to get blasted by some of my fellow critics when I unabashedly say that I thoroughly enjoyed Stanleyville.
The absurdity is entirely the point, and our heroine, Maria, is our avatar of modern disconnect, flailing for meaning in an often meaningless world.
I get it; Stanleyville is NOT for everyone, and that is 100% okay. It meanders, it plods, it even backtracks on occasion, but so does life.
How much have human beings done throughout history in the quest for something less than a “slightly used habanero-orange compact sport utility vehicle?”
How much have YOU done for something so generically meaningless?
Thought so.
The ambiguous ending played right into my weirdly absurd tastes as it circled back to the opening, as Maria was contemplating her very existence.
Kudos to the cast for taking a risk and taking part in something so far afield from what a big-budget production of the themes might have ended up as.
Stanleyville will premiere at the Metrograph in NYC on April 22, with a wider release to follow, and stars Susanne Wuest, Cara Ricketts, Christian Serritiello, George Tchortov, Adam Brown, and genre legend Julian Richings.
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