52 Films by Women Vol 9. 44. Messy (Director: Alexi Wasser)
Messy, the debut
feature of actress turned sartorial assistant turned writer-director, Alexi
Wasser, is a ‘seize the day’ kind of movie. Offered $100,000 to make a feature
– that’s the budget, not her fee – Wasser coerced celebrity friends and ‘young
talent’ to appear for nothing in a film in which for she wears next to nothing in
many key scenes. The film switches between her boudoir, a drinking
establishment and the back seat of an Uber – ‘bed, bar and beyond’, so to speak
– as it tells the story of how the freshly uncoupled Stella Fox (Wasser)
negotiates the allure of available men in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. In
2026, if you are not a resident of the United States, you can only safely
‘visit’ New York City through movies or television shows. These days, a Broadway
show consists of armed ICE agents confronting a hot dog vendor. If you dress up
as a baseball mascot, you might be safe. However, you can’t watch a movie
through a set of googly eyes.
Wasser got her permission slip from no less a cancelled personage than
comedian Louis CK, who she cornered at a party. ‘I thought you were making a
short,’ he apparently told her later after the film made John Waters’ 2024
‘best of’ list. I’d like to think it was for more than for the scene in which
Stella awakes to discover her face covered in vomit – the grossest moment in
the movie – but you never know. One of Stella’s besties is Mandy (Merlot), a
gay man who transitioned to womanhood and who reflects that they were never as promiscuous
as Stella.
If her filmography is anything to go by, Wasser has been waiting to make
this movie for the last two decades. Her early work as actor-writer is a series
of shorts entitled ‘Boycrazy’, directed by David Lowery, an executive producer
on Messy. Wasser is self-aware enough to know that there
might be something vaguely Freudian in her obsession. Stella leaves a number of
voicemail messages for her father who never replies. I expected something darker
in the pay off, but it is of a piece. You might expect a woman in her forties
to have moved on to other forms of addiction, but the truth is that any sort of
compulsive behaviour is never satisfying. The phrase ought to be, ‘it’s the
hope that kids you’.
The AI overview of Messy, derived from
a composite of (unreliable) reviews is that it is ‘indulgent’ and
‘experimental’. This is a description of
Stella’s behaviour. Indulgent means moving from a bar owner to a bartender.
Experimental: sleeping with two men. If you wanted to find cause to distrust
AI, this is it. Never mind allowing it to manipulate your photographs.
Wasser opens the film with Stella talking to camera virtually non-stop,
her face filling the screen. You notice her blue eyes and the creases made by
muscles in her mouth as she says certain words, almost as she were placing
brackets around her lips. I found myself not paying full attention to what she
was saying, as she reeled off her unrealistic expectations of a man, who,
amongst other things, must not be on social media but like her posts. The pay
off doesn’t get the laugh Wasser hoped for, but it establishes that Stella has
left Los Angeles following a failed relationship and that she doesn’t have a
job. However, she has an unknown friend who allows her to flat sit in the ‘Tudor
City’ district of Manhattan – running gag, ‘no one really knows where it is’.
In the film’s final scene we are told that Katharine Hepburn lived there,
though Stella says it is between 41st and 42nd Street,
not 49th Street, and it was called Turtle Bay.
Stella goes to a party where she meets redhead aspiring actress Ruby Soho (Ruby McCollister), who also does Tarot readings – she’s a multi-hyphenate. The scene in which Ruby shuffles a set of tarot cards is triggering for the neuro diverse as one card falls out of the pack and Ruby doesn’t appear to notice. You conclude that this was the best take. For her part, Stella tells one man that she can guess his star sign, going through the entire Zodiac before she arrives on the right one. She then dismisses his response as ‘typical [star sign] behaviour’. A man simply has to sidle up to Stella for her to be interested, though to be fair this is men without grey hair. Men with grey hair would surely have asked Wasser for an appearance fee, if only to cover medical.
As depicted in the film, New York parties consist of drugs – one row of
heroin, the other ketamine – alcohol, pushy individuals but no music. Wasser’s
budget didn’t cover clearances. One young man expresses an interest in Stella,
gets her number, then moves on. It doesn’t take long for Stella to hook up. In
one early encounter, a man (Thomas Middleditch) tells her that he has
ejaculated into her vagina, having not used a condom. Stella hypothesises the
possible outcomes of this, that she might not have a baby since her eggs have
been fried, or else that she gets pregnant, gives birth and raises the baby
alone. The man is not keen on this scenario and rushes out to buy the morning-after
pill, where other men might fetch coffee and croissants. Stella takes the pill
and, during another sexual encounter, bleeds heavily afterwards.
A few of the sex scenes are filmed from overhead, with the remainder of
the scene showing the chests of both Stella and her lover. Although there is plenty of sex in the film,
the nudity isn’t sexualised; we are usually shown the point of orgasm, and even
that isn’t overplayed. One gag is that Stella can never remember what she says
during love making. I can relate, being unable to recall entire trips to
supermarkets.
The best scene in the film is the one with the most plot. Stella is
drinking in a bar when she recognises magazine editor, Leo Fontaine (Mario
Cantone, best known for Sex and the City). He is
drinking with friends. Stella asks him what he is drinking. ‘Martini’. ‘Two
Martinis, please,’ she demands, while she already has a champagne flute in
front of her. (‘Compliments of the house.’) Stella tells Leo that she is a
writer. Her directness results in getting his business card. ‘Send me some
samples,’ he tells her. ‘Stay with me,’ entreats Stella. ‘I’m with friends,’ he
says, retreating. This is the only scene in which Stella wants something from
someone, other than phoning her father and speaking to customer service about a
manifestation candle that went out before she made a wish. Apparently, with one
of these (red) candles, you can articulate a desire, and it floats in the
atmosphere like smog, influencing others’ behaviour. As a backup, Stella uses
breath spray.
Stella refers to one man as her boyfriend, but then he doesn’t show up.
The bar owner (Adam Goldberg) treats her to a tirade about the man is not good
enough. Stella ends up sleeping with him. She asks him if he has kids. He
doesn’t answer. Later she sees a photograph of a young girl on his fridge.
‘Who’s that?’ ‘My daughter.’ He tells her that he may not be forty-five, more
like fifty-five.
Stella is given to the end of the month to write an 800-word article on
dating in New York City, from the perspective of a new arrival. She is
thrilled. However, the words don’t come. She has no shortage of incident to
report, including telling a bartender (Dion Costelloe) to delete footage on his
phone of him having anal sex with her. ‘But it’s hot,’ he pleads. Stella agrees
but still asks him to delete it. He does so. ‘Did you delete it?’ Stella asks.
‘Because there’s a folder filled with recently deleted items.’
Mandy and Ruby set Stella up with the ‘perfect guy’, who has recently
ended a relationship. We see them talking in the street and he slaps her. She
wants to know why he did it. Although he doesn’t excuse himself, we conclude
that he articulates his frustration of being dumped by his previous partner,
using his new date as a surrogate. This isn’t the only slap that Stella
receives in an intimate situation. The other guy similarly has issues.
Intermittently amusing but always watchable, Messy is by its
nature – and production restrictions – incident driven. It builds to a scene
where Stella is fenced in by two guys. One of them kisses her. ‘Are you a
vampire?’ she asks. ‘Do you want me to turn you?’ the man responds. The two men
accompany her to her building. One of them won’t enter the lift. ‘I don’t like
enclosed spaces.’ He takes the stairs. Meanwhile, Stella busies herself with
her first seducer in her bed. Eventually, the other guy turns up. Stella wakes
the next morning to discover one of them had a nosebleed on her sheets. ‘Too
much coke,’ she is told. They also ask her, ‘what were you writing?’
This is the sort of film where a man sleeps with Stella, then notes that
the apartment has IKEA furniture, with one particular piece being hard to get.
Wasser’s budget doesn’t extend to art galleries, movie houses or restaurants,
though in one scene Stella receives a pep talk from an older married woman
(Ione Skye) who is having an affair. In another scene, Stella shares a bath
with a man, who pretends that her foot is a mobile phone.
At a certain point, Stella is disgusted with herself, but then she
receives validation. She also encounters her ex, Jeremiah (Denver Milord), whom
she rebuffs. There is a curious scene when Stella, Mandy and Ruby are having
drinks, and an African American approaches her. Stella sends him away. The
scene is not an expression of racism. Stella is drawn to men whose flaws are
more readily apparent in a setting of her choosing. Wasser flirts with the
consequential follow-up to a brief dalliance when she is invited to drink with
her friends in a bar owned by the fifty-five-year-old whom she dated. She wants
to leave the Uber. However, her friends persuade her to stay. In the bar she
sees the man with a teenage girl. ‘Is that his daughter?’ Stella asks. The
owner kisses the girl on the mouth. ‘I guess not.’
Reviewed at BFI South Bank Screen Three,
London, Friday 9 January 2026, 18:10 screening, UK Premiere
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