Movie Review - Downloading Nancy (2009)

Downloading Nancy
Starring Maria Bello, Jason Patric, Rufus Sewall, and Amy Brenneman
Directed by Johan Renck

Based on an apparently true story, I was actually looking forward to seeing this flick (I'm fairly certain I posted the trailer on the blog a while back). It's not that I even had high expectations, but this movie is just miserable, lacking any real sense of emotion and failing to draw me in to the odd, quirky story.

Nancy (Bello) hates her life. Her obsessive-compulsive husband (Sewell) won't sleep with her so she turned to the internet for sexual gratification...that is when she's not slitting her wrists in an attempt to find love for herself from her self-inflicted pain. When the film opens, Nancy is running away from her husband, fleeing to meet Louis (Patric), her internet lover. As it is soon discovered, Louis isn't only her lover -- he is also going to be her killer. Nancy wants to end her pain and suffering and Louis is going to be the one to do that. However, neither Louis nor Nancy planned on falling in love with one another.

The premise here is interesting, but the execution is awful. In an attempt, I suppose, to look "realistic," everything here appears to be lit in some horrid florescent manner, leading to a washed-out and grainy look that gets tiresome after about ten minutes. Additionally, the director feels that odd cuts and unnecessary quick repetitions are "cool," but really they're just covering up how morbid the story is.

The actors don't really come off as winners here. Rufus Sewell as Nancy's husband is so gratingly boring and one-note that I longed for his scenes to end about twenty seconds into them. Maria Bello and Jason Patric play fine enough off of each other, but their odd sadomasochistic sexual deviancy just comes off as incredibly uncomfortable (and uneasiness is not a reason to inherently dislike a movie -- see Antichrist as an example). It's not Bello and Patric's fault that the script fails them by not giving them any type of emotional connection -- the reason why they fall in love (beyond their mutual sexual quirks) is not explained at all, and, seeing as how this is a huge aspect of the plot, the movie cannot succeed.

The RyMickey Rating: D