52 Films by Women Vol 8. 8. She Came to Me (Director: Rebecca Miller)

 

Still courtesy of Vertical Entertainment

Despite her age (born 1962) Rebecca Miller could unkindly be described as a nepo baby. The daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, she published short stories and novels before turning to film directing. To date, she hasn’t achieved a break-out hit, though her five previous features – Angela, Personal Velocity, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Maggie’s Plan – and one documentary, Arthur Miller – Writer, have been well-regarded and proved an inspiration to others, including Greta Gerwig, to whom she gifted a pair of shoes. Her sixth feature, She Came to Me, an out-and-out crowd pleaser, opened the 2023 Berlin Film Festival. With sufficient marketing, it might have been a modest hit. It features the best cinematic use of a tugboat outside a disaster movie - and most involve shipping trawlers, yachts, or luxury liners. However it came to US cinemas on 6 October 2023 and went pretty quickly, washed away by the cinematic tsunami that was Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.

Miller’s film skews to an older crowd, the sort that heeded the Covid era warnings not to go out and stayed put when restrictions were lifted, such was the growth in home entertainment. In the UK, the film went straight to streaming, where it is lost in a sea of mediocre action films. Not that anyone would mistake its star, Peter Dinklage, for Liam Neeson, though I would pay to see him in a Taken knock-off.

Dinklage plays Steven Lauddem, an opera composer creatively blocked for the past five years. One imagines President Trump liked his last work; Steven would have wondered where he had gone wrong. He married his psychiatrist, Patricia (Anne Hathaway), who, like Steven works from home, though at least one of her patients makes egregious confessions about wanting to see her naked. I imagine Steven made a similar such confession before he and Patricia hooked up. He is stepfather to Patricia’s eighteen-year-old mixed-race son, Julian (Evan Ellison), who is dating a student two years younger than him. I’m not exactly sure how Tereza (Harlow Jane) ended up in the same class, but they are both interested in finding technological solutions to help humanity arrest the climate crisis. Tereza’s mother, Magdalena (Joanna Kulig) works as Patricia’s cleaner, a coincidence familiar to readers of Sally Rooney’s Normal People; one imagines Miller skipped that novel. At any rate, the young couple threaten to be divided not by Patricia, but by Magdalena’s partner, Trey (Brian D’Arcy James). In one scene, Trey invites Julian to guess his profession, getting him to read from the newspaper, before Tereza takes over, Trey hammering away on his shorthand machine. ‘Oh, you are a stenographer,’ Julian concludes. Trey corrects him: ‘court reporter’. He has heard so many cases that he wants to give the lawyers some advice.

Trey doesn’t just have an inflated opinion of himself, he takes part in civil war re-enactments, happy to be on the wrong side if he has a bigger part to play. He spares his family his hobby, until he kicks into over-protective mode, being appalled by polaroids Tereza discovered of her daughter taken by Julian. ‘We have probable cause,’ he announces, delightedly.

Miller’s main subject isn’t the role of the stepfather in the modern American family – though it could have been - rather in how romance blossoms in unexpected ways. The ‘she’ of the title is tugboat captain, Katrina (Marisa Tomei), who, like Steven, finds herself in a bar at eleven o’clock in the morning. Steven struggles to choose a brand of whiskey to enjoy, such is his general sense of discombobulation, having been shooed out of the house by Patricia after a patient arrived. Katrina is more settled, nursing a pint. She comes to talk to him, telling him about her work and how she ended up in Brooklyn – and in a bar – on her day off. She commands a six-person crew, some of whom we meet later, and exudes lightly worn authority. De-glamorised, her hair windswept even indoors, Tomei is utterly convincing. When she offers to show Steven her tugboat, you don’t blame him for being curious.

His face obscured by a thick beard that gives him gravitas and well as signifies a prickly demeanour, Dinklage plays scepticism incredibly well. Steven is wary of people but also loathe to let them down. Katrina, like the hurricane from which she is named, overwhelms him, having led him to her cabin where she is in control, her favourite place in the whole world. We share Steven’s wonder, his elation at being disrobed by a powerful woman. As he relinquishes control, he is transported to a greater happiness.

Still courtesy of Vertical Entertainment

Miller’s film is full of parallels. As well as two stepfathers and two operas, there are two disrobing scenes, the second as unexpected as the first. Steven’s marital betrayal inspires a new opera, in which Katrina’s words become the libretto. Katrina is depicted as a woman who leads men to their doom. ‘She’s like a female Sweeney Todd,’ one audience member crows. We expect Katrina to be offended that she has been depicted in that way, but she is more upset that Steven didn’t continue their relationship. She accepts being his muse. ‘You are not my muse,’ Steven responds, before adding, ‘actually you are.’ He doesn’t want to give in to his feelings, preferring instead to return to being a lofty artist.

It is fair to say that Steven’s opera is fairly awful, hiding banality and obviousness in high notes. There is a humorous rehearsal scene in which Steven complains about the soprano’s interpretation of Katrina’s character – her singing straightens out Katrina’s edges. The director ejects Steven from the theatre. ‘Music was the only thing I was ever good at,’ he remarks early on. Clearly tempering his opinion is another weakness.

But if high art is insubstantial in Miller’s film, so is low art, the obsession with civil war reenactments. Trey is just as cranky as Steven when it comes to his pastime. The muskets would have been clean in the 1860s, and not dirty as they are in the mock-Army camp, where he takes Magdalena and Tereza near the end of the film. When Trey sees a plastic container for Pot Noodles, he is apoplectic.

Steven’s opera is moderately well-received, though he complains that he did not receive a standing ovation – he is just as ego-driven as Trey. He is hired to compose an opera about aliens. The threat of a lawsuit against Julian inspires him. Julian can only escape being labelled a child molester for the rest of his life by marrying Tereza. They need to find a state that permits marriage of a minor. Finally, they choose Delaware. With Trey having connections with the police and being able to prevent Julian and Tereza crossing state lines, Steven knows just who can help transport them out of state undetected.

Patricia meanwhile has her own crisis to mirror that of her child’s concern with the environment. She feels guilty. She begins by donating possessions to the local Catholic church, some of which, one nun remarks, looks new. She volunteers, dispensing candy to children. Then she starts disconnecting the appliances in her kitchen to give them away. ‘I want to donate this house to the church,’ she tells Steven. ‘Where would we live?’ he asks. ‘In a little apartment somewhere,’ she replies. It is only a matter of time before she learns of Steven’s infidelity. Late for the start of an appointment, she tells her patient, Carl (Chris Gethard) about how a child was treated for his fear of the triangular dumpling, kreplach, disrobing as she does so, so by the time she is naked (modestly framed by Miller), and screams the punchline, Carl is truly disturbed.

Dinklage’s beard also suggests that of a salty seafarer. It is no surprise how the romantic drama ends. As the cast of characters watch his space opera (‘Hurry Hurry’), the camera finally settles on Patricia, attired for her new vocation. She Came to Me is unashamedly old-fashioned, its young cast the straight foils to the flaky older generation – just like in The Birdcage. It boasts a modest number of laugh-out-loud moments, but its characters never appear as smarter than the audience. Miller doesn’t do elevated wit, or realism either. Her film is peculiarly genial entertainment. You can’t put it in a box and describe it neatly. But it overflows with generosity towards its ensemble. A scene on the tugboat in which Steven hears a member of the crew hum a tune whilst playing roulette, then decides to play it on an organ, leading them into song, exemplifies the film’s cracked charm.

 

Reviewed on Saturday 24 February 2024, ‘Now’ Movies.