PARK CITY – Bradford Young earned his first Oscar nomination today for “Arrival,” Denis Villeneuve’s moving sci-fi drama, the night before his second collaboration with director Andrew Dosunmu, “Where Is Kyra?,” debuted at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Both films are examples of his expert cinematography skills, as there are few people on this planet that can light a room like it’s the canvas of a 17th-century Vermeer. The problem with Dosunmu’s follow-up to the more compelling “Mother Of George” is that there is so little story — and what story there is moves at such a snail’s pace — that all you have to look at are Young’s impressive compositions and then you wait…and then wait some more.
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The plot is quite simple. Kyra (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a middle-aged, divorced woman who has moved to New York to take care of her ailing mother (Suzanne Shepherd). After she passes sooner than expected, Kyra discovers that there’s been a mistake with the death certificate that will hinder her getting some sort of income (likely her mother’s life insurance). As she waits the four-to-six weeks for the certificate to be fixed, she becomes increasingly stressed looking for work. She has her own mountain of bills to pay (even Young can make Pfeiffer calculating receipts on a comforter look heavenly) and the only income she can find is from handing flyers out on the street.
With no friends and only an ex-husband hundreds of miles away, the only good thing to happen in Kyra’s life is Doug (Kiefer Sutherland), a taxi driver with dreams of someday owning his own cab. Eventually, Kyra becomes so desperate for money she masquerades as her mother in order to cash the pension checks that are still arriving every few weeks. It’s a dangerous game, but she eventually is willing to do anything not to hit rock bottom, let alone kicked out of her mother’s apartment.
These trips to the bank are the few times there is any dramatic tension in the film whatsoever, and even that is mitigated by the fact that they unfold so slowly. In disguise as an elderly woman, Kyra walks as slow as a turtle, and Dosunmu lets the camera hold on her often for minutes at a time. It becomes tiresome to watch her journey in the bank lobby from the entrance to the teller window.
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Sadly, Pfeiffer and Sutherland are pretty much wasted here. The former attempts to cast more shading on her character, but Dosunmu and screenwriter Darci Picoult give her little backstory to work with — so much so that the pacing often gives you enough time to actually ponder Kyra’s past in a way that distracts from the proceedings on screen (does she really have no one else that can help her? Why doesn’t she apply for jobs online at the library, or take what she has and move to a different state? Has she tried any employment services in NYC? Seriously, you have time to wonder about every possible option). Sutherland, who Young somehow makes look 10 years younger than he is, spends most of his time trying to make Kyra feel better about her situation, even if his character doesn’t have the real financial means to do so.
By the end of the movie, you are struck by a striking image Young has conceived that flashes at you hypnotically. It’s so beautiful you just want to put it on a loop and hang it on your wall. There are a number of moments like that in “Where Is Kyra?” It’s unfortunate that they do not coalesce into a cohesive and compelling piece of cinema. [C-]
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