Infuriating Nancy Brings on the Pain

Nancy Stockwell (Maria Bello) has unexpectedly left her husband of 15 years Albert (Rufus Sewell) for a surprise trip to Baltimore. What he assumes will only be a weekend away with friends is anything but, his wife having very different plans than any he could have guessed. She’s meeting up with Louis Farley (Jason Patric), a man she met and corresponded with on the internet, and while the sex they’re going to be having is probably bad enough what she’s actually paying him to do is something guaranteed to rock Albert’s world forever.

Jason Patric and Maria Bello in Strand Releasing's Downloading Nancy

Apparently based a true story, Downloading Nancy is the only effort I saw during the first ten days of the Seattle International Film Festival that ticked me off. From start to finish it is an aria of pain and suffering with no redeemable features whatsoever, and by the time it was over I was so annoyed, upset and disturbed I wanted to find some sharp jagged rocks so I could throw them at the screen.

I’m fine with depressing movies as long as there is a method to their madness. Recent pictures like Babel or The Hours or Closer or Revolutionary Road have a reason for being, a place of emotional edification to which they ascend. There is a purpose, a truth behind the suffering, and even though all of them ran me ragged and left me more than a little bit destroyed I still exited the theater feeling like I just experienced something genuine and true.

All I felt walking out of director Johan Renck’s debut was fury and indignation. I was upset that he and his writers chose to subject me to what they did, borderline offended that writers Pamela Cuming and Lee Ross (who also came up with the story) thought this was a good idea in the first place. They threw me in a meat grinder only to leave me there just for the sake of listening to me scream, my bloody carcass strewn across a multitude of theater seats along with the rest of the audience I had the misfortune to see it with.

I guess I have to give the actors kudos. All do an exemplary job, Patric and Bello ripping themselves so emotionally (and sometimes physically) bare in hindsight if I stand back I can’t really help but be impressed. The invest themselves fully into the material, their passion for it feeding some sort of need I can neither relate to or endorse but it is still one they walk across glass and shed blood for all the same. Additionally, it is beautifully shot by the great Christopher Doyle, the look and feel reminding my of the work he’s done for Wong Kar Wai on pictures like Chungking Express and Happy Together.

So what? There are no great, important human lessons to be learned here, no truths about the interior complexities of the soul and psyche that could make any of what occurs to be worthwhile. Downloading Nancy is pure, unadulterated and undiluted nihilism, plain and simple, the masochistic glee Renck and company exude bringing it forth one that actually sickens me right to my very core. I hated this film, there are no simpler ways to say it, and the only tears I’m going to shed are ones for the unlucky audience members who pony up the dollars to see the it for themselves.

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Review posted on Jun 5, 2009 | Share this article | Top of Page

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