Imagine a bingo card of Sundance-y indie movie clichés: adults engaging in illicit affairs with teenagers, middle-class matriarchs hiding dark secrets, tinkling piano scores to signal emotional gravity. Debra Eisenstadt’s suburban drama “Imaginary Order” would undoubtedly check off the boxes on the surface and have you declaring your victory, a neat row of squares exed through. And yet, despite the film’s reliance on some of the film festivals most tired tropes, “Imaginary Order” manages to reignite the world of housewives gone rogue regardless.
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The housewife in question is Cathy (Wendi McLendon-Covey), a coiffed and polished mom who’s so obsessed with image she can’t even let her daughter bake an imperfect cake. Cathy walks a fine line between martyrdom and myopia, forever sacrificing her time and attention to her family and charities while remaining cold and emotionally selfish. Tara barely speaks to her, her husband is nonexistent, and her grieving, hoarding sister hardly trusts her to cat-sit. Cathy is so boxed into her self-prescribed role that she deserves her own chapter in “The Feminine Mystique” – and yet, she is selfish in her suffering. Everyone is sick of Cathy, especially Cathy.
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Thus, “Imaginary Order” offers a nuanced, middle-aged female protagonist – a depressingly rare cinematic phenomenon, even at Sundance. Wendi McLendon-Covey gamely steps up to the part, defying her comedic supporting role roots (you’ll most likely recognize her from “Bridesmaids”). She gives a performance that is at once arresting and gutting, making Cathy’s progression from numbed out passivity to emotional honesty breathtakingly believable despite her melodramatic surroundings.
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Unfortunately, this contrast between depth of character and absurdity of plot is where “Imaginary Order” begins to falter. Though Cathy is fascinating, writer/director Debra Eisenstadt throws so many clichés at her that it’s almost as if she’s inhabiting a satirical meta-commentary on indie dramas themselves. The paint-by-numbers plot plods on with little subversion: Perfect suburban mom rebels by smoking, popping pills, and cheating on her husband. Things crumble when her secret life and home life collide. If the performances were as wooden as the plot, “Imaginary Order” would be unwatchable, save for some deliciously unexpected moments – Cathy washing menstrual blood out of her daughter’s underwear while talking about her relationship with her mother, for example. Instead, McLendon-Covey’s lead turn and some savvy supporting performances (most notably Kate Alberts as her daughter) keep things compelling for the film’s overstretched 100-minute run time. It’s also great to see Eisenstadt play with construction, layering frenetic montages over serious dramatic dialogue, even when her experiments miss the mark.
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Thanks to shrewd acting and imperfect-yet-interesting editing choices, “Imaginary Order” ultimately skews more fresh than banal. In the world of Sundance, where emerging directors are constantly taking risks, “Imaginary Order” is admirable in its experimentation. It would, therefore, be reductive to categorize ‘Imaginary Order” as either major success or failure: sometimes it really works; sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, it’s a fantastic vehicle for Wendi McLendon-Covey, who’s something of a revelation here – and there are worse ways to spend a Park City afternoon. [C+]
Check out all our coverage from the 2019 Sundance Film Festival here.
