At first glance, Lucy doesn’t seem like the type of person who would go on a spiritual retreat. She’d probably agree with that herself. But she wishes she was, so she struggles through forced silences and sharing sessions, hoping to achieve a kind of enlightenment that she doesn’t really believe in. An embittered former teenage actor, played by Jennifer Connelly with the burnt, brittle air of someone gradually drifting away from polite society, her prickly aura is ill-suited to the expensive Oregon sanctuary she’s enrolled in, the hushed meditation and trust exercises delicate, and this conflict based on energy gives Alice EnglertIt’s a strange and seductive satirical drama.”Bad behavior“immediate intrigue – vibrations so jarring and violent that it feels like they must give way to something physical and drastic.

Halfway through the film, they do – in a way that confirms the surprising and admirable severity and brutality of Englert’s first feature as a director, and also brings it to a point where its second half slightly softer and more conventionally weird can’t live up to it. has. At first, the film alternates between the stories of Lucy and her adult daughter Dylan (played by Englert herself) to form a divided portrait of women whose desires are increasingly incompatible with the environment they have chosen; Once it brings the characters together, for a study of careful family ties in dire circumstances, it loses its dramatic and thematic definition. It is nevertheless an original and auspicious work from the New Zealander – bearing at least some common DNA with the ashen black comedy of the early films of Englert’s mother, Jane Campion (who makes a brief appearance here).

“Bad Behavior” is also notable as an unusually long and risky showcase for Connelly, an actor who may have recently hit a career high at the box office in “Top Gun: Maverick,” but whose pensive, nervous presence on screen has been too rarely tested by Hollywood in the two decades since she won an Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind.” Here she’s subtly but keenly agitated from the jump, already bristling with a slight unease and discomfort in her own skin when we meet her driving to Oregon, calling Dylan from the car to warn him that she’s going to be out of reach for, well, however long it takes for a paid epiphany to arrive. Dylan, a film stuntwoman working on a film set in New Zealand, seems neither surprised nor worried: the even-handed tone between them makes it clear that mother and daughter are at least similar in their confinement.

The retreat is both Spartan and elevated, presided over by a spiritual leader – the unassuming name Elon – who is disarmingly simple, but also serene in a way that suggests a kind of higher knowledge. Avoiding the cliché of the cult leader for a leaden daily conviviality which ends up becoming sinister, Ben Whishaw Elon cleverly plays the role of equal parts guru and con artist: his advice is sometimes obvious, but still what the person needs to hear. Englert’s screenplay avoids easy mockery of spiritual search and those who pursue it, but finds cold, fragmentary comedy in the notion of universal therapeutic techniques, which further alienate Lucy from a group in which she already feels unstable.

Most of his irritation lands, not entirely undeservedly, on new arrival Beverly (an astute Dasha Nekrasova), a famous and vacuous model who openly fears losing her youth and influence; as someone now devoid of both, Lucy can offer him harsher truths than Elon. Starting off as passive-aggressive before the “passive” part is rather boldly chipped away, this often very funny standoff between the two women gives Lucy’s half of the tale a snap and tension than Dylan’s, mostly revolving around of her temporary romance with an unavailable actor. Elmore (Marlon Williams), misses. But the two portraits are no less complementary, each insightful about the balance that women are supposed to find between emotional honesty and smiling reserve. Simon Price’s brief editing lays out these parallels clearly, while Matt Henley’s cold, hazy lens often situates mother and daughter in the same light and air, even though they are meant to be on opposite ends of the world. (In fact, the entire production was filmed in New Zealand.)

After the film’s exhilarating and unexpected climax, Lucy and Dylan’s eventual reunion transforms it into a quieter, chattier affair. But even then, some of the discussions are witty and enlightening, leading to a resolution that, if not happy, seems conciliatory and hard-won, while being true to the flaws and vanities of its characters. “You’re going to have to forgive me,” Lucy said to her daughter, “and then forgive yourself for taking so long to forgive me.” Spiritual enlightenment thus opposes toxic narcissism – recognizing that people can’t change much, Englert’s debut finds what crumpled catharsis she can in the best of their bad times.