Nancy

In 1970, Barbara Loden (Elia Kazan’s wife) made a film titled Wanda about the trials of a passive woman coming to terms with the hand she’s been dealt, just trying to get through life living in a rural Pennsylvania coal town. For her directorial debut, Christina Choe follows a similar path in Nancy about an unprepared woman (Andrea Riseborough) whose mother has Parkinson’s, requiring constant care and supervision. Aching for a purpose and recognition outside of her drab existence, Nancy invents elaborate lives to reach out over the internet and enter the personal space of others. Seeing an age-progressed image of a missing child, Nancy becomes convinced that she might be Ellen (J. Smith-Cameron) and Leo (Steve Buscemi) Lynch’s daughter who’s been lost for 30 years. Fully aware that she will face interrogation and tests, she shoves Paul, her cat, into a duffle bag and heads out into the unknown desperate for a life different from her own. With a dour hesitancy, Riseborough never yields to expectation even when Ellen embraces her as her daughter while Leo remains skeptical.

[NR]