Misty Green Isn’t the Movie It Thinks It Is

Misty Green, the new movie from Chris Rock, proposes that the only thing less dignified than being an actor who’s never made it is being one who did, but who’s now struggling. That’s the situation its title character, played by Rosalind Eleazar, finds herself in — broke and out of work and clutching her 2008-2009 Best Supporting Actress Emmy as she faces the prospect of having to vacate the oceanview condo that used to be covered by her now-deceased sugar daddy. Misty was once a rising star on a TV show that used to air after Scandal, destined for greater things — but that was as great as it got, thanks in part to her taste for pills and cocaine and her gifts for self-sabotage. Now she’s in a purgatory of being recognizable without having access to the privileges of being famous, and still having to audition alongside younger and younger women for increasingly unappealing parts. When she complains to her agent (Topher Grace), he tells her “Is Hollywood racist? Yup. Is it sexist? Fuck yeah, it is. But don’t act like you never had a shot.” Then, miraculously, she gets another one just as the ground is crumbling under her feet — a chance to read for a remake of Dreamgirls that could be the start of her second act, presuming she can hold it together to make it to the audition, never mind the actual gig.

As a showcase for Eleazar, who’s best known as either Louisa on Slow Horses or Kat Donovan on Missing You, depending on your streaming affiliations, Misty Green is outstanding. Showing off is part of its text — singing Radiohead covers at a regular hotel bar gig, turning sides about degradation into a showstopping monologue, and going from bedraggled to glam in the space of an edit in preparation for an ill-advised night out. Misty is truly talented, and also capital-D difficult, and you can see the calculations in people’s eyes as they try to figure out whether working with her is worth the risk when she might not show up, or might get in a fist fight with a wardrobe girl. Eleazar isn’t just fearless about leaning into Misty’s uglier aspects, both in terms of personality and rough mornings-after in the glorious Los Angeles sunlight. What makes her performance so propulsive is how contradictory she allows the character to be, prone to making big pronouncements she immediately goes back on, or to going off in a strop about something that’s undeniably true, all the while keeping us guessing whether Misty is lacking in self-knowledge or merely acting in her own defense. When she boasts about her own freedom, about how she lets no one put limits on her behavior, it doesn’t sound like even she believes herself.

As a film about L.A. as a place where glamor and degradation exist side by side and where veneer-perfect Hollywood smiles mask soul-dead monsters, Misty Green has nothing insightful to say. Rock’s occasional stints as a director have been unpredictable, ranging from a clunky political comedy (Head of State) to the Éric Rohmer remake I Think I Love My Wife. This new drama with satirical touches is part of a long tradition of depicting LA as a glittering hellscape, going back to The Day of the Locust. But it treats its depiction of the industry as if it is speaking truth to power, instead of as something that is now pockmarked with clichés. Misty Green’s supporting characters on the Hollywood side — from Misty’s fellow-actor bestie (Anna Kendrick), who loves sleeping with Black men but who’ll only get her trust fund if she marries a white guy, to the pseudo-pimp (a downright oil-slicked Adam Driver) Misty sleeps with sometimes — feel a little easy, while Jordan, a director who’s willing to give Misty another chance despite being burned by her before, is given a jarring nobility, probably because he’s played by Rock himself.

There’s a discordance at the core of Misty Green that also comes directly from Rock, who’s always been a sharp observer of systemic problems, but who’s skeptical of the impulse to attribute everything to them. In Top Five, still his best film, his character tries to demonstrate to Rosario Dawson’s how little racial progress the country has made by proving that no taxi will stop for him, only for one to pull up as soon as he extends a hand. In Misty Green, that tension manifests through a refusal to give a neat explanation for how Misty got the way she is. It’s admirable in theory, but in practice the film ends up floating a bunch of half-formed ideas that manage to be both too much and not enough. Misty has a half brother (an underused Daniel Kaluuya) with mental health issues whom she’s been supporting, though details of their childhood together are laid out in splintered flashbacks that are impossible to parse. She has a complicated relationship with being biracial that manifests in some too-quick observations about belonging. She’s been unfaithful to everyone she’s dated, something the film doesn’t want to judge but also seems to have an urge to pathologize. While these details are all meant to contribute to a portrait of a complex character, they accumulate into a film that verges on being spiteful of Misty — one that acts like it’s exploring her many facets while it actually wants to vivisect her and open her insides up for display.

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