ACTRESS

Brandy Burre is a character actress .... or rather was one when she appeared in the third and fourth season of HBO's The Wire some eight years ago. Now she is a housewife and the mother of two small children living quite a comfortable existence in suburban Beacon in upstate New York with her restaurateur boyfriend Tim.   This new film on her life now can hardly be called a fly-on-the-wall documentary however as Burre, ever the actress, cannot help but play up to the camera at times when she sees to forget that this is actually her real life and is not just yet another role that she has been cast to play. 

Shot (and edited) by Robert Greene, who also happens to be Burre's next door neighbor and friend. it focuses on her desire to get back to work.  Sitting on a beanbag in the children's room on her own sorting out their toys she sighs out loud 'I'm not acting, so this is my creative outlet, I guess'.  She does in fact get some gigs singing with a band, and is also seen discussing potential work on the phone, but neither of these things lead to anything else.

Filmed making rather a drama out of simple daily domestic tasks, Burre also uses her two infant children as her audience when she openly discusses life with them as if they are adults.  She is faced with little choice as Tim steers clear of the filming, and finally from her when he  chooses to move out.  She talks through this all out loud on camera rather melodramatically and although she avoids explaining the reason for his decision, it is apparent that he had discovered that she has been unfaithful. She nevertheless uses his silence to cry 'pity me 'into the camera as she is determined to be the martyr of the piece. 

Despite Greene's brave attempt to paint a flattering portrait of someone who has 'suffered' by giving up her 'art' to be an unselfish mother and spouse he completely fails as there no real evidence that her career was the unqualified success that she recalls to anyone like her hairdresser who is forced to listen. At the same time Burre fails to disguise the basic fact that she is so completely self-centered and unquestionable selfish, qualities that seem to be essential requisites in her eyes to return to acting again.

Greene makes uncomfortable voyeurs of us all particularly because he fails to make us like Burre at all.  He finishes the movie with no real conclusion as to what Burre's future will actually turn out to be , but you do get this real sense, even in his small bachelor apartment on his own, that Tim at least is so much better off now.

★★★★★