‘Superior:’ A Stylish, Droll Noir That Explores Identity [Sundance Review]

With her frayed blonde hair and moody coal-black eye makeup, rock band singer Marian (Alessandra Mesa) doesn’t immediately appear to resemble her identical twin sister. Practically a Stepford wife with her demure manner and neat brown bob, Vivian (Ani Mesa) lives with her loser husband (Jake Hoffman) in the same house the sisters grew up in. She’s stifled by her domestic routine of cleaning, gardening, and grocery shopping, but too meek to do anything about it—perhaps because that audacious, thrill-seeking part of her has gone missing, quite literally, with the disappearance of her other half some six years ago. 

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Shot in 16mm that complements the film’s throwback aesthetic, “Superior,” kicks off with an impromptu sisterly reunion. Building upon her 2015 short film of the same name, writer/director Erin Vassilopoulos depicts Vivian and Marian’s adult versions with a time-jump forward, well after the teenage fallout envisioned by the short. Donning a white fringe get-up, Marian shows up unannounced at Vivian’s home following a violent roadside confrontation with her leather-jacket wearing beau, Robert (Pico Alexander). She’s got a recording gig nearby, so she simply decided to visit, Marian claims, though her shrugging demeanor betrays the fact that she’s got something to hide. Ghostly, unsettling hallucinations of Robert and a trio of white hounds punctuate Marian’s day-to-day, while the occasional appearance of questioning cops keeps her on edge. 

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Despite Marian’s fugitive skittishness and the sisters’ differences, the two reconnect in such a way that seems to alter their personalities, prefiguring an eventual switcheroo in which Vivian agrees to take Marian’s shifts at the local ice cream shop. What is a twin movie, after all, without identity swapping? Through this act, each sister comes to terms with the emptiness of their lives without one another, yet the script by co-writers Vassilopoulos and Alessandra Mesa remains oblique on this front. Opting for a dazed, mysterious tone comes at the cost of more grounded and interesting characters, though observing these two women uncannily shift in and out of different roles is not without its pleasures. The idea of having another person whose identity you can easily assume for either escapist or protective purposes is a compelling one, and it buoys the film’s noir aspirations. 

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Set in 1987, the film’s production design and sartorial stylings mirror an Almodóvarian color palette, which adds a certain offbeat buoyancy to the droll, distant proceedings. Bits of dry humor achieve this as well: the 16-year-old pothead that runs the ice cream shop, Vivian’s husband, and his fixation on antique tobacco tins, for instance. Yet there’s something naggingly contrived about these quirky additions. The actors speak in modern dialect, and the film’s retro-chic aesthetic doesn’t capture the period so much as it feels like the product of an effort to replicate it using contemporary clothing and knick-knacks drawn from Urban Outfitters. This might’ve worked in a film that intentionally toys with time, but “Superior” falls short of inhabiting the period within which it purports to exist. One wonders why, in a film that flirts with fantasy, the filmmaker bothered to go back in time at all. 

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A sleepy, if pleasantly amusing, mid-section picks apart the siblings’ woes and drops clues regarding Marian’s private life. But when the story shifts into its final act—complete with roofies, taped-mouths, and a kidnapping—the script ignores or doesn’t know what to do with the obstacles and intrigue, it sets up, namely Robert’s vengeful reappearance and the conception problems that torment Vivian’s homelife. Vassilopoulos and Mesa choose a blowout only loosely tethered to the rest of the story, giving a buried subplot of domestic abuse oddly low stakes. Our twin heroines may be reunited and more bonded than ever by the end, but “Superior” doesn’t do a particularly effective job at making us care. [C+]

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