In the recent documentary Jane Campion, The Cinema Woman, there’s a nice moment from yet another film festival press conference when the directing Dame nods towards her then teenage daughter in the wings and says: “Alice is my best movie.”
Australian-born Alice Englert, whose father Colin is also a director, has grown up in the arthouse. An actor since adolescence, she’s established herself as an edgy character actor in films like Ginger and Rosa, then taken that indie profile to a regular presence on prestige television dramas, including her mother’s Top of the Lake: China Girl.
Now, after directing a couple of short films, she has written and delivered her debut feature, Bad Behaviour, an off-kilter, initially darkly funny mother-daughter story with autobiographical overtones.
Sensibility-wise, it appears the apple has not fallen far from the tree. But you have to wonder if the apple was ripe enough to drop from it.
Because, while Bad Behaviour is a movie of promising premise and weirdly compelling beginnings, it all unravels spectacularly in the second half, when it chucks in a baffling animated fantasy sequence, interpretative dance and cave exploration, among other tangents. What starts out intriguing becomes amusingly infuriating. There are moments that feel like more the product of actor workshops than a coherent screenplay.
As well as writing and directing the film, Englert also stars in it as Dylan, a stuntwoman we meet on the set of a ropy fantasy production somewhere in the South Island where her risky work could be an extension of youthful self-harming.
Meanwhile, her mother Lucy, a former child star (played by one-time child star Jennifer Connolly and last seen in Top Gun: Maverick), is attending a spiritual retreat at Loveland Ranch under Mt Hypnos, somewhere in Oregon.
There, the Tesla-driving clientele have arrived to seek enlightenment from guru Elon Bello (Ben Whishaw, who was John Keats in Campion’s Bright Star).
While Dylan fumbles around with one of the show’s stars (Marlon Williams) and raids her production hotel’s mini-bar, Lucy finds the supposedly calming retreat more of a stress test, especially with the arrival of influencer/DJ Beverly (Dasha Nekrasova), whose self-involvement outstrips even hers. That animosity leads to an event that reunites Dylan and her mother. And cue the great unravelling.
It might be seen as yet another satire of all things wellness, especially with the entertaining bullshit espoused by Whishaw’s Elon, but it’s not really.
Englert has talked about accompanying her mother to spiritual retreats and Campion has herself featured cult followers (Kate Winslet in Holy Smoke!) and leaders (Holly Hunter in Top of the Lake) in her work.
Throughout, there is sideline fun to be had playing possible spot-the-mum references (that business with the red wigs in Dylan’s fantasy show – a salute to An Angel at My Table’s hairpieces?)
Until, that is, you actually spot the mum – Campion has a brief cameo as a physician treating Dylan’s on-set injuries. If only her duties had extended to script doctor.
Rating out of 5: ★★½
Bad Behaviour directed by Alice Englert is in cinemas now
