NancyEverybody dreams of being somebody else, though few of us actually are. Nancy is a drama about a thirty-five year old woman named Nancy Freeman (Andrea Riseborough), who passes time between temp jobs and taking care of her mother, Betty (Ann Dowd), by fabricating more interesting existences for her co-workers and the strangers that she meets on the internet. When Nancy's mother passes away and she sees a news story about an affluent couple telling about their five year old daughter who was abducted thirty years ago--with a time lapsed photograph that bears an uncanny resemblance to Nancy--she considers that she might have been their daughter all along.
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The tension in Nancy hinges on making its protagonist suspicious from the start. The eponymous Nancy is visibly aloof and withdrawn, and is nearly always staring into her cellphone. When she starts a new job at a dentist's office, and the conversation turns to vacations, she casually brings up that she just took a trip to North Korea. This provokes the disbelief from her colleagues, yet she produces photographs on her phone that appear to back up her claims. Despite this, she deflects questions about what she did in the country proper, and some of the photos she claims to have taken are so nondescript and vague that it only encourages the audience's suspicion that Nancy is lying. Nancy's deceptions continue when she misrepresents herself as a pregnant woman on an internet profile to a man named Jeb (John Leguizamo), who takes a shine to her, and shares how his daughter died as an infant. But Nancy is not pregnant, and goes to see Jeb wearing a prosthesis. It isn't until she is discovered that she tells Jeb that she faked this pregnancy because she had previously lost her child, so in her eyes it wasn't entirely a ruse. Nancy is constantly being pressured by her mother to try and do something with her life between moments of hostility brought on by her mother's increasingly debilitating Parkinson's disease. It is evident that Nancy has tried to pursue some other avenue in her life--the crumpled rejection letters she shoves into her glove compartment speak to this--but she still drifts from day to day, aimless. Despite her penchant for fabricating identities, she seems completely ill-equipped to support herself after her mother dies, subsiding on whiskey and cereal; life for Nancy was already on a downward spiral. When she catches the story about psychiatrist Leo Lynch (Steve Buscemi), and his wife, Ellen (J. Smith-Cameron)--an English professor--where they happen to mention the scholarship they set up in honor of their missing daughter, Nancy sees a glimmer of hope for a new life that will blot out her old one.
It is after Nancy reaches out to Leo and Ellen that the movie shifts into exploring how all three adults approach the delicate mix of hope and apprehension that comes with the remote possibility of a miracle--in this case that a family has been reunited after thirty years. The audience is put into the uncomfortable position of doubting Nancy's intentions given her history of lies, and their desire to see someone who has fallen on tragically hard times perhaps find some degree of happiness. Nancy balances this uncertainty by creating a circuit of doubt and hope between these three characters. Leo is prone to scrutinizing Nancy--as politely as one can--and withholds affection from her, unconvinced that Nancy is anything more than an opportunist, but desperate not to hurt his wife. Conversely, Ellen is hopeful, all but concluding that Nancy is their long lost daughter even before the results of the DNA test come back. This means that if Nancy is lying, the shame that should follow must be so great that Ellen is banking on Nancy's basic human decency to be the true litmus test. Both personality traits are represented abstractly through their respective occupations--Leo analyzes Nancy to identify some clue that she is deceiving them, while Ellen treats the visit as though it were the climactic chapter in one of novels she might teach in school. There are details that Nancy shares that are obviously fabricated--like when she tells them that she remembers "letting go" of Ellen's hand at the mall. This contributes to the sense that Nancy is untrustworthy, making the audience unsure if they should root for Nancy or hope that these people catch on to her falsities instead. Nancy brings her cat, Paul, with her to visit Leo and Ellen upstate, but before she leaves her home for the final time, there is a faint suggestion that she has left the cat behind, alone and unattended. It isn't until the cat makes his presence known after she gets there that the audience knows that Nancy is at least a good enough person to not abandon her pet. Paul represents a rare piece of honesty in Nancy, who--although she cannot bring the cat into the Lynch household because Leo is allergic--still cares for the feline, and even becomes emotional when he goes missing. Is Nancy especially distraught because the cat represented her ability to care for another living thing? This would make sense because of the death of her child and the passing of her mother. (Only after Betty's death does Nancy learn that she missed some important clues of the impending stroke.) The appeal of Nancy comes from the rare way in which it deceives the audience, making its characters more than just two-dimensional stereotypes with uneasy motivations.
Recommended for: Fans of a drama that keeps its audience on the back foot with its open-ended way of inviting varied interpretations while leveraging the viewer's biases in the depictions of its characters. Nancy may seem slow going at the start, but this gently establishes the characters as complex people; despite not having a great deal of offensive content, the themes of the film are likely best appreciated by an older audience.
It is after Nancy reaches out to Leo and Ellen that the movie shifts into exploring how all three adults approach the delicate mix of hope and apprehension that comes with the remote possibility of a miracle--in this case that a family has been reunited after thirty years. The audience is put into the uncomfortable position of doubting Nancy's intentions given her history of lies, and their desire to see someone who has fallen on tragically hard times perhaps find some degree of happiness. Nancy balances this uncertainty by creating a circuit of doubt and hope between these three characters. Leo is prone to scrutinizing Nancy--as politely as one can--and withholds affection from her, unconvinced that Nancy is anything more than an opportunist, but desperate not to hurt his wife. Conversely, Ellen is hopeful, all but concluding that Nancy is their long lost daughter even before the results of the DNA test come back. This means that if Nancy is lying, the shame that should follow must be so great that Ellen is banking on Nancy's basic human decency to be the true litmus test. Both personality traits are represented abstractly through their respective occupations--Leo analyzes Nancy to identify some clue that she is deceiving them, while Ellen treats the visit as though it were the climactic chapter in one of novels she might teach in school. There are details that Nancy shares that are obviously fabricated--like when she tells them that she remembers "letting go" of Ellen's hand at the mall. This contributes to the sense that Nancy is untrustworthy, making the audience unsure if they should root for Nancy or hope that these people catch on to her falsities instead. Nancy brings her cat, Paul, with her to visit Leo and Ellen upstate, but before she leaves her home for the final time, there is a faint suggestion that she has left the cat behind, alone and unattended. It isn't until the cat makes his presence known after she gets there that the audience knows that Nancy is at least a good enough person to not abandon her pet. Paul represents a rare piece of honesty in Nancy, who--although she cannot bring the cat into the Lynch household because Leo is allergic--still cares for the feline, and even becomes emotional when he goes missing. Is Nancy especially distraught because the cat represented her ability to care for another living thing? This would make sense because of the death of her child and the passing of her mother. (Only after Betty's death does Nancy learn that she missed some important clues of the impending stroke.) The appeal of Nancy comes from the rare way in which it deceives the audience, making its characters more than just two-dimensional stereotypes with uneasy motivations.
Recommended for: Fans of a drama that keeps its audience on the back foot with its open-ended way of inviting varied interpretations while leveraging the viewer's biases in the depictions of its characters. Nancy may seem slow going at the start, but this gently establishes the characters as complex people; despite not having a great deal of offensive content, the themes of the film are likely best appreciated by an older audience.