Movie Review: Michelle Pfeiffer Disassembles Her Character – And Reassembles Her Career – In “Where Is Kyra?”

[yasr_overall_rating]
 

In Brooklyn, New York, Kyra (Pfeiffer) loses her job and struggles to survive on her ailing mother’s income. As the weeks and months go on, her problems worsen. This leads her on a risky and enigmatic path that threatens her life.

Out of all the Hollywood career resurgences of late, none makes me happier than the comeback of the goddess Michelle Pfeiffer. She somehow managed to steal every scene featuring her character in Darren Aronofsky’s mesmerizing mind-bender “mother!” Her natural glamour and sophistication lit up Kenneth Branagh’s otherwise-dim “Murder on the Orient Express.” And now comes Andrew Dosunmu’s vérité drama “Where Is Kyra?,” providing the actress with an opportunity to truly showcase her considerable talents in a spectacular, harrowing performance.

Kyra’s mother passes away. She seems to have been the center of Kyra’s life. The middle-aged woman dedicated all her time to taking care of her ailing mom, making sure she’s fed and walked and strapped to her oxygen tank. Stricken by grief and loss and loneliness, Kyra now wanders the streets, her brown hair as disheveled as her soul, fruitlessly searching for a job, a meaning, something to grasp onto. She finds brief solace in Doug (Kiefer Sutherland), but time starts to run out. Job applications disappear into the ether. All the positions Kyra applies for are instantly taken.

With no other choice, she assumes her dead mother’s identity – old-lady wig and all – to collect unemployment checks at the bank. The less opportunities she has, the more Kyra disappears – inside her own mind, inside the memory of her mother and, like a ghost, in a cruel, unaccepting world – until the world shrinks down upon her, making it hard to breathe, literally succumbing Kyra to her mother’s chair, with an oxygen mask strapped to her face.

As the film progresses, it somehow manages to sustain its dark, dreamy, almost-hallucinatory tone, while also tightening the screws and building tension like a taut thriller. Kyra’s plight may be unbeknownst to some, but will in some form or another resonate with most. Its pace may be considered glacial by today’s norms, but Dosunmu wisely avoids Hollywood trappings and sticks to his poetic – if at times verging on overly grim – view of society and death and life.

Cinematographer Bradford Young, who worked on “Arrival” and shot the upcoming “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” does a spectacular job conveying mood here with dimly-lit, amber, angular shots. Most of them involve Kyra, either in the forefront, or blurred in the background, akin to a specter – and boy, does Pfeiffer hold the screen. There are scenes, like the one where Kyra is forced to beg for money, that are borderline unwatchable in their discomfort and sadness, every trace of those feelings conveyed effortlessly by the stalwart. A scaled-back and touching (!) Kiefer Sutherland has genuine chemistry with her, a perfect counterpart, a faint beacon in a disintegrating world.

“Where Is Kyra?” reminded me of another film, Oren Moverman’s sublime “Time Out of Mind.” It also featured a legendary actor – Richard Gere – shedding his glamorous persona in pursuit of something real, a poetic odyssey through the murkier, dreadfully gorgeous pits of humanity. While not quite reaching the heights of Moverman’s feature, Dosunmu certainly achieves something unique and memorable here, anchored by the perfect lead. Kyra may soon be missing, but Michelle is very much back.

In select theaters Friday, April 13th