Always ShineAre our personalities more than skin deep? Always Shine is an independent drama and suspense film about two actresses--Beth (Caitlin FitzGerald) and Anna (Mackenzie Davis)--who go to a remote cabin in Big Sur, California for a weekend retreat--two women on a remote getaway. Beth is preparing for a lead role in a horror film she describes as terrible, while Anna is unable to secure an acting gig in the slightest. As the two spend time together, the increasing friction between their two very different personalities boils over, leading to a crisis of not just camaraderie but of identity itself.
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From the earliest moments in Always Shine, the audience has to wonder how Beth and Anna ever managed to become friends in the first place, being so different from one another as they are, and there is also the constant wedge of Beth's rising success digging deeper and deeper between them. Our introductions to both women are nearly identical: Beth is giving an audition for the aforementioned horror film--called "The Stones"--and Beth is chewing out a dubious mechanic. Both scenes are deliberately framed not only to suggest a performance, but shot with a close up of the women's faces, with an intimate, invasive proximity suggesting both vulnerability and intensity. Both performances are that--acting for their respective audience--and both are attempting to obtain a reaction from that audience. Beth appears overly submissive and placating, while Anna is ferocious and defiant. Along with Anna and Beth's decaying friendship, the theme of Always Shine is in its estimations of popular conceptions of what it is to be feminine..."ladylike". The film opens with an ironic quote by John Robert Powers, claimed to be from "Secrets of Poise, Personality, and Model Beauty": "It is a woman's birthright to be attractive and charming. In a sense, it is her duty...she is the bowl of flowers on the table of life." The quote speaks volumes about perceptions of women on a superficial level, and is the undercurrent of how both Anna and Beth are viewed by those around them--especially men--in Always Shine.
Beth draws attention like a moth to flame because she is non-confrontational and doesn't get involved in arguments like Anna does--maintaining an almost "Stepford Wives" level of neutrality and amicability. She is like a living doll; she doesn't sneer or express displeasure when the spurious creative team auditioning her refer to her in condescending terms like "honey" or "sweetheart" with regularity. She is overly cautious about her figure; even though Anna is the one who performs exercise, Beth seems adverse to even finishing a tiny bowl of instant macaroni and cheese. But Beth has obvious emotional problems; she is disingenuous, and it is clear that she does look down on Anna, and even resents or fears her, making up excuses to avoid helping her ostensible friend in getting even a minor part in an "avant-garde" film. Beth claims that she doesn't like doing the multitude of nude scenes that come with her job, but continues to do them all the same...because she understands that it ultimately gets her what she wants--a sense of superiority, if even just over Anna. However, as Beth points out, Anna is "intense"; she is passionate and resents being dismissed or ignored--or flat out lied to--and Always Shine empathizes more with her experiences than with those of Beth. When a man at a bar buys the two women drinks then talks up Anna, her insistence and curiosity about the man's stay in Big Sur ends up turning him off. He fumbles with how to express his receding attraction to Anna--the word he should have used is "gregarious"--and later hits on the less challenging (and yet more boring) Beth, who gives him her phone number (like a good girl), even though she's already involved with someone else. In the world of Always Shine, this man--and a bartender who factors into the last act of the film--represent a sociological mindset that cannot rationalize a woman like Anna speaking her mind, and can see only the desirable elements, with everything else swept away like the tide. There is a sense that Beth is already consumed by this personality-obliterating kind of neurosis which afflicts women like her, and has turned her into someone who can no longer relate to her one-time friend, leaving only an increasing degree of escalating passive-aggressive barbs to be traded between them.
It is evident that Always Shine is heavily inspired by Ingmar Bergman's classic psychological drama about fluid identity (and also, arguably, early feminism), Persona. As in that film, Anna and Beth are two different women who maintain a close proximity--to claustrophobic levels even--while on a retreat, and their eventual collision of egos results in a kind of "swapping" of personalities, like two eggs cracked and scrambled together. Similarly, both films also exploit cinematic conventions that blur the line between the movies and reality. Periodic montages and rapid, jagged cutaways to other locations--some not yet visited, others seemingly incongruous--also threaten to expose that paper-thin barrier between fantasy and reality, between acting and authenticity. In the case of Always Shine, the powder keg of Anna and Beth's argument explodes into a dramatic fight, after which--and without introduction to it--Anna appears to have adopted the clothes, mannerisms, and style of Beth, as if she were giving a "performance" of the other woman. There is a clear sense of jealousy conveyed by Anna, like the awkward autograph encounter at the restaurant on the way to Big Sur. The most intense of these scenes might be when Anna presses Beth into helping her do a script reading to prepare for her role. Beth describes her character as being "sassy", a characteristic more intrinsic to Anna. When Anna criticizes Beth's uncommitted performance, she suggests they swap roles, at which point Anna takes to Beth's character like a fish to water, and also uses the biting dialogue to appear to attack Beth from the camouflage of her character. The most pointed irony of this role reversal is that it really highlights the superficiality of other people, like the assorted California flakes encountered in the film. The previously mentioned bartender, who gave Beth a ride back to the cabin, ends up picking up the "new Beth" in his bar, and doesn't convey any sense of bewilderment at the recast love interest, seeing her only from the most shallow perspective. The continued irony of setting Always Shine in California--even if it is in a more rustic part of the state--is that it also critiques the Hollywood institution, the proverbial "dream factory", where illusions are more real than real, which in turn cultivates the kind of widespread hysteria and inability to distinguish fact from fiction. Essentially, Anna becomes the great sacrifice on this altar of fantasy in her journey through Always Shine, a "Dante" to Beth's ephemeral "Virgil".
Recommended for: Fans of a provocative, creative tale of psychological suspense, one which is an obvious homage to Persona, and also recalls more recent, similar dramas like Queen of Earth. Always Shine tackles challenging themes of sexism, identity, and trust all within a brief amount of time, and affords the audience to draw their own conclusions about the ending.
Beth draws attention like a moth to flame because she is non-confrontational and doesn't get involved in arguments like Anna does--maintaining an almost "Stepford Wives" level of neutrality and amicability. She is like a living doll; she doesn't sneer or express displeasure when the spurious creative team auditioning her refer to her in condescending terms like "honey" or "sweetheart" with regularity. She is overly cautious about her figure; even though Anna is the one who performs exercise, Beth seems adverse to even finishing a tiny bowl of instant macaroni and cheese. But Beth has obvious emotional problems; she is disingenuous, and it is clear that she does look down on Anna, and even resents or fears her, making up excuses to avoid helping her ostensible friend in getting even a minor part in an "avant-garde" film. Beth claims that she doesn't like doing the multitude of nude scenes that come with her job, but continues to do them all the same...because she understands that it ultimately gets her what she wants--a sense of superiority, if even just over Anna. However, as Beth points out, Anna is "intense"; she is passionate and resents being dismissed or ignored--or flat out lied to--and Always Shine empathizes more with her experiences than with those of Beth. When a man at a bar buys the two women drinks then talks up Anna, her insistence and curiosity about the man's stay in Big Sur ends up turning him off. He fumbles with how to express his receding attraction to Anna--the word he should have used is "gregarious"--and later hits on the less challenging (and yet more boring) Beth, who gives him her phone number (like a good girl), even though she's already involved with someone else. In the world of Always Shine, this man--and a bartender who factors into the last act of the film--represent a sociological mindset that cannot rationalize a woman like Anna speaking her mind, and can see only the desirable elements, with everything else swept away like the tide. There is a sense that Beth is already consumed by this personality-obliterating kind of neurosis which afflicts women like her, and has turned her into someone who can no longer relate to her one-time friend, leaving only an increasing degree of escalating passive-aggressive barbs to be traded between them.
It is evident that Always Shine is heavily inspired by Ingmar Bergman's classic psychological drama about fluid identity (and also, arguably, early feminism), Persona. As in that film, Anna and Beth are two different women who maintain a close proximity--to claustrophobic levels even--while on a retreat, and their eventual collision of egos results in a kind of "swapping" of personalities, like two eggs cracked and scrambled together. Similarly, both films also exploit cinematic conventions that blur the line between the movies and reality. Periodic montages and rapid, jagged cutaways to other locations--some not yet visited, others seemingly incongruous--also threaten to expose that paper-thin barrier between fantasy and reality, between acting and authenticity. In the case of Always Shine, the powder keg of Anna and Beth's argument explodes into a dramatic fight, after which--and without introduction to it--Anna appears to have adopted the clothes, mannerisms, and style of Beth, as if she were giving a "performance" of the other woman. There is a clear sense of jealousy conveyed by Anna, like the awkward autograph encounter at the restaurant on the way to Big Sur. The most intense of these scenes might be when Anna presses Beth into helping her do a script reading to prepare for her role. Beth describes her character as being "sassy", a characteristic more intrinsic to Anna. When Anna criticizes Beth's uncommitted performance, she suggests they swap roles, at which point Anna takes to Beth's character like a fish to water, and also uses the biting dialogue to appear to attack Beth from the camouflage of her character. The most pointed irony of this role reversal is that it really highlights the superficiality of other people, like the assorted California flakes encountered in the film. The previously mentioned bartender, who gave Beth a ride back to the cabin, ends up picking up the "new Beth" in his bar, and doesn't convey any sense of bewilderment at the recast love interest, seeing her only from the most shallow perspective. The continued irony of setting Always Shine in California--even if it is in a more rustic part of the state--is that it also critiques the Hollywood institution, the proverbial "dream factory", where illusions are more real than real, which in turn cultivates the kind of widespread hysteria and inability to distinguish fact from fiction. Essentially, Anna becomes the great sacrifice on this altar of fantasy in her journey through Always Shine, a "Dante" to Beth's ephemeral "Virgil".
Recommended for: Fans of a provocative, creative tale of psychological suspense, one which is an obvious homage to Persona, and also recalls more recent, similar dramas like Queen of Earth. Always Shine tackles challenging themes of sexism, identity, and trust all within a brief amount of time, and affords the audience to draw their own conclusions about the ending.