Shirley

Zwei Ehepaare, das eine älter und etabliert, das andere jung und voller Pläne für die Zukunft: So kommen sie zusammen, Shirley (Moss) and Stanley (Stuhlbarg), Fred (Lerman) und Rose (Young). In herkömmlichen Kategorien sind es die Männer, deren Karrieredynamik von Professor und Doktorand die Struktur vorgibt. Aber Josephine Decker setzt das, was zwischen den Frauen passiert, zentral. Moss’ Shirley, die an die Horror-Autorin Shirley Jackson angelehnte Schriftstellerin, die qualvoll und andere quälend aus ihren Neurosen Literatur gebiert, benutzt und manipuliert auch Rose. Doch die ist klug genug, daraus ihrerseits Lehren zu ziehen. (Barbara Schweizerhof)

Josephine Decker’s film is a fantasia based on details from the married life of Shirley Jackson, author of “The Haunting of Hill House” – and a classic “unruly woman” who defied convention, respectability, and politeness. It’s the 1950s, so her academic husband Stanley teaches blues music as “myth and folklore” to students at Bennington, and a new, permissive morality fights the old, sedimented ways of the local community. Shirley herself fights crippling depression. Into this dysfunctional but colorful household come young scholar Fred and his feisty, pregnant wife Rosie – who becomes Shirley’s assistant and much more. Decker slices and dices the generic moods: biopic, psychological thriller, horror, visionary art film, avant-garde extrapolation. There are fleeting allusions to Akerman’s JEANNE DIELMAN, Bergman’s PERSONA, Losey’s THE SERVANT, Polanski’s REPULSION. Decker’s cinematic style is haptic: seeing as touching, the camera-eye as the fingers of a hand. Dreamlike images abound, but even ordinary scenes have a hallucinatory air. In this grandly textured tale where fiction and reality often change places, Elisabeth Moss’ astonishing performance as Shirley provides a solid anchor. (Adrian Martin)

Josefine Decker: NAKED PRINCETON (2005), BI THE WAY (2008, Ko-Regie), WHERE ARE YOU GOING, ELENA? (2009, K), SQEEZEBOX (2010, K), BUTTER ON THE LATCH (2014), THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY (2014), COLLECTIVE: UNCONSCIOUS (2016, Episode), FLAMES (2017, Ko-Regie), MOSAIC (2017, Episode), MADELINE’S MADELINE (2018), THE MASK TASK (2018, K)