Marianna Palka is the sort of indie auteur whose confrontational nature has long prevented her from breaking into the mainstream. She came out the gate in 2008 with the abrasive “Good Dick,” starring herself and Jason Ritter, a film whose title and subject matter likely stunted any potential for mainstream indie popularity (I should note that it’s an excellent film). Since then, her directorial output has been slightly less in-your-face, with titles like “Always Worthy” (lesser Palka) and “I’m the Same” (I must confess to never having seen this one). Toning things down hasn’t exactly catapulted Palka into household-name status, which may have something to do with the fact that her new film, “Bitch,” is about as confrontational a piece of work as anything else to come out this year.
“Bitch” has a fairly simple premise: a beleaguered housewife, ignored by her husband and taken for granted by her kids, suffers a mental breakdown which causes her to behave like a rabid dog. Palka plays Jill, the housewife; Jill’s husband, Bill, is played by longtime Palka collaborator Jason Ritter.
First and foremost: Palka is a powerhouse of an artist. Writing, directing, and starring in a movie as energetic and subversive as this one is no easy feat. It would be an admirable achievement even if the finished film wasn’t any good.
Luckily, the film is very good. It’s vintage Palka, much more in line with “Good Dick” than “Always Worthy,” with completely unlikeable characters doing completely fucked-up things to one another in the funniest ways possible. It balances genre tropes in a fascinating way: Palka spends most of the movie in the family’s basement, covered in her own excrement, barking and growling like a particularly scary rabid dog; these scenes have the look and feel of an Eli Roth torture-porn horror flick (I detest those movies, for the record), and yet that isn’t what “Bitch” is at all. It’s much more “The Shaggy Dog” than “Hostel,” but Palka knows just when and how to utilize tropes from both these genres, and more, to tell her totally distinct, presumably personal story.
Palka’s “dog” scenes are genuinely scary, thanks both to her directorial choices and her vicious, wild, aggressively singular performance as Jill. And yet “Bitch” is a funny — sometimes very funny — movie. Jason Ritter is phenomenal here in what is a mostly comic role. He’s always great when he’s directed by Palka: she seems to know just how to get these amazing, layered, hilarious performances out of this guy who has otherwise been relegated to sitcoms and hacky roles in TV dramas. There’s a scene, early in the picture, where Ritter’s character is letting all of his frustration and anger at his wife out, sitting in his car on a kindergarten playground; it’s representative of just how quickly Ritter/Palka are able of oscillate between tones (very quickly). Another scene, where Ritter’s character, Bill, is finally being vulnerable with his sister-in law (Jaime King), veers so quickly from serious pathos to mind-boggling, yet somehow grounded, absurdity, is a lesson in comedic timing from both Ritter and Palka.
But the biggest comic revelation here is one Roger Guenveur Smith, playing Ritter’s boss in a quantitatively small role. His is possibly the single funniest supporting performance in any movie this year. The humor here is mostly in his performance, so I won’t go ahead and try to describe the comedy in any sense, as it would surely not come across as particularly funny here at all. All I can do is encourage you to see the film for yourself, and experience one of the most low-key, heightened, hilarious turns of the year in Smith’s two — maybe three — scene role.
Beware some hit-or-miss child performances, though. Bill and Jill have four-or-so children, with their teenage daughter, Tiffany (Brighton Sharbino), getting most of the play. Sharbino isn’t bad, but some of the younger actors just aren’t working at the same level as the rest of the adult cast. There’s enough strong material happening around the children — particularly the Ritter stuff — for it to not weigh down the movie significantly, but don’t expect to be wowed by these kids.
I saw “Bitch” for the first time back in March, at the Boston Underground Film Festival, and after the screening there was some calling into question of the film’s feminist bona-fides given that it centers on a woman’s mental breakdown yet focuses almost entirely on how her husband deals with its fallout. And while I disagree with that analysis (the film is actually about a man who took his wife for granted, having his life unravel when his wife is no longer available to keep it intact), that fact that it does focus on the male end of things is probably Palka’s most subversive creative decision of all (and remember, this is a movie called “Bitch” that features its writer-director-star covered in her own shit for the majority of the film’s runtime). It’s Palka’s story to tell, regardless, and as far as I’m concerned, she’s told it quite well.
The thing about which I am most conflicted as regards “Bitch” is its “Punch-Drunk Love”-inspired soundtrack, which is intentionally aggravating, perhaps too much so. It’s a bit obvious at times. Still, I appreciate what Palka was going for with the heady, anxiety-provoking music cues. Not a huge quibble.
Marianna Palka deserves better, is the thing. She’s been out there doing crazy, ambitious work like this since 2008 and I’ve never heard another critic so much as mention her name in conversation. “Bitch” is a wild, original piece of work and you should make the requisite time to watch it sooner than later. It’s an altogether impressive effort from Palka, Ritter, Smith, et al. [B+]
