Ingrid Goes West (2017)

So I've just seen this movie and I can say that it is somehow disturbing and I had an unpleasant feeling during the movie. This is an actual issue these days. I think that the final point of the movie was that it's actually all about that one person that loves you (and in this case: saves you). Important movie. Something has to be done because technology is taking over and it's just not worth it.

After Ingrid Thorburn crashes a wedding and creates an ugly scene, she spends some time in a facility on medication. On her release she uses her inheritance from her recently deceased mother to relocate to California where she cyberstalks minor Instagram celebrity Taylor Sloane. She steals Taylor's dog in order to gain an introduction by having "found it" - she has modelled herself by reference to Taylor's postings by now. Her obsession grows up to the point where Taylor's brother may have found her out.The trailer gives the impression that this is a comedy. There are some amusing moments, but this is more disturbing than funny.On one level, this is a salutary comment on the inadvisability of living your life via social media, the artificiality of online personae, and the shallowness and glibness of online status updates. The fashion for posting photographs of your meals, "profound" epigrams, social climbing via status - all are targeted in passing.On another level, though, this is a portrait of a very disturbed, and disturbing young woman. She is someone who is unable to live her life other than by reference to someone else, is in denial about that fact, and doesn't understand why she is doing it anyway.I like Aubrey Plaza who plays Ingrid, and produced this film. Her previous comedic work gives little indication of her ability to play a character like Ingrid: repellent, attractive, just a little bit off in her interactions with the world, and terribly, terribly sad. She is terrific in this. Elizabeth Olsen plays the rather thankless part of Taylor, superficially nice and attractive, but actually shallow, selfish and insensitive and, ultimately, a good deal less likeable than Ingrid.The only character who comes out really sympathetically is Ingrid's landlord Dan (O'Shea Jackson Jr) who, apart from an unusual (but, in my view, wholly understandable) preoccupation with Batman, is a genuinely nice person.Based on the trailer, I expected to like this as it was going along rather more than I did. However, it left a far greater impression on me than I expected.

While this movie might end up looking obsolete in a few years depending on where technology goes, sociologically, it's damn on point and prescient. Not so much funny as dark and disturbing, it did a good job of showing how empty everyone was, even the so-called "heroes." The ending was a nice touch as well.

"The King of Comedy", for the digital age.In a social media world where the currency of cool lies not just in dreaming it, but in BEING it... we can all front like we're Batman.I have serious issues with both the beginning, and the end, though... Cutting out the pre-credits sequence would not only allow us to feel more sympathy for Ingrid, given that it's the only directly violent act we see her perpetrate in the whole film - but it would also keep us more off balance as to how far she's willing to go, once events begin to spiral...As for the ending - isn't that just giving her everything she wants?! Perhaps the point it was making was that nothing can completely disbar somebody from becoming 'famous'... but the optimist in me was hoping for a mini-redemptive arc for Ingrid, and a glimpse that she was on the path toward learning to like herself... Oh, well.