written by Dennis Harvey, Variety
With “Lake George,” Jeffrey Reiner makes his first indie feature as writer-director since the 1990s, following a prolific quarter-century helming small-screen projects. The filmmaker has cited formative viewings of classic film noirs on television as an inspiration, but this twisty tale feels more like the melancholy genre fictions of the late Ross Macdonald — low-key, droll, downbeat yet empathetic tours through labyrinths of disillusioned and corrupted Southern California lives.
While there’s a fair-sized body count here, the path hewn by uneasy allies Shea Whigham and Carrie Coon comes off less as a thriller than a rueful black comedy of errors, with even the most violent characters carrying a certain pathos. It’s a consistently involving effort that should reward discerning viewers amid the flood of flashier year-end titles. Magnet is releasing to limited U.S. theaters and digital platforms on Dec. 6.
More Willie Loman than Sam Spade, middle-aged Don (Whigham) wakes up in his nondescript motel room with little reason to get out of bed, beyond the suggestion that his money is running very low. A montage of unsuccessful calls underlines that he’s out of options: His few remaining contacts for potential employment are disinterested or dead, and he’s evidently estranged from his family. It takes some time before we grasp the circumstances (including a prison stint) that brought Don to this dead end.
His last resort is a reluctant visit to former boss Armen (Glenn Fleshler), who in theory owes him some cash. But despite living in considerable splendor from various criminal schemes, Armen resents not being even richer — and blames this erstwhile flunky for messing up “so spectacularly that it cost me a lot of money.” As strongarm Harout (Max Casella) looks on, Armen offers a deal: He will cough up the sum owed if Don “takes care of” his apparently duplicitous mistress-turned-business partner Phyllis (Carrie Coon), i.e. killing her. No coldblooded hitman, our hero declines. But he’s given no choice in the matter, so he grudgingly begins staking out the quarry.
Fortysomething Phyllis is first glimpsed tending to an elderly woman outside a rest home. Once abducted, she reinforces the notion that she’s an innocent party in all this, claiming to be nothing more than the victim of Armen’s fickle affections and his henchmen’s jealous hostility. Don drives her to a suitably remote desert spot, but can’t bring himself to do the deed — instead he tells her she must simply disappear, for both their sakes. Phyllis bounces back from mortal peril with amazing speed, however. Soon she’s convincing her would-be assassin that given her insider knowhow, they can easily rob Armen of riches hidden in various cronies’ abodes, then “disappear” into new identities and locales.
Needless to say, none of this goes as smoothly as she promises. And meanwhile, the supposedly wronged Phyllis grows more confident, brash and imposing with each step. For a person who says she’s never killed anyone before, she sure turns out to be blasé about crossing that line … repeatedly.
As it winds from Glendale to the high Sierras, with a lot of home break-ins and motel rooms between, “Lake George” deploys familiar tropes of pulp noir, but doesn’t use them to hit the usual notes. There’s scant sexual tension between the central couple; he’s too vanilla for her, and desire may be among the many things that cruel fate has already knocked right out of Don. While Phyllis’ actions may increasingly look like that of a classic, duplicitous femme fatale, neither the writing nor Coon’s matter-of-fact performance play it that way — her actions are driven by such blithe, compulsive self-interest, she probably can’t conceive of them as “wrong.”
She keeps saying “I’m a good person,” though gradually we realize Phyllis is someone who doesn’t actually believe in such things. She does come to believe it of Don, even if only as a weakness. Whigham’s hollowed-out man, with barely the will to live after having stupidly alienated everything he cares about, is a character so subtly drawn that the actor’s still-restrained expressions of happiness at the end carry great poignancy.
The roll-call of supporting characters, colorful as they are, also evade stereotype. Even Armen and Harout, goons accustomed to doling out grievous bodily harm, ultimately merit a twinge of viewer pity. “Lake George” is often amusing, but never mean-spirited, and without sentimentality, it has more heart than such genre exercises typically hazard. The deftness of Reiner’s approach is amplified by the ways in which Tod Campbell’s unfussy widescreen cinematography gradually encompasses more spectacular scenic backdrops, just as Rene Boscio finally expands upon the solo piano textures of his faintly bluesy, jazz-adjacent score. This is a story with numerous stinging ironies, albeit one told in a refreshingly nuanced, non-hyperbolic fashion that pays off very nicely indeed.
Featuring Production Design from Stuart Blatt
