Proxy

"I just came to do the things you couldn't do." 

2013

120 min.

Directed by Zack Parker

Written by Zack Parker and Kevin Donner

Starring Alexia Rasmussen, Alexa Havins, Joe Swanberg, Kristina Klebe

Proxy opens with an attention-grabbing slow zoom backwards, beginning at the swollen, jelly-covered belly of a very pregnant young women named Esther (Alexia Rasmussen). It’s one of those exceptional opening shots that announces the presence of a director who knows what he’s doing, and establishes a certain air of trust. You’re willing to subject yourself to whatever the filmmaker has prepared for you because he’s in control, like a mad engineer at the helm of a freight train. The zoom ends with a carefully composed image of Esther lying on her back, and we look into that hollow-eyed stare, vacant and distant, while a young nurse (played by some actress who isn’t very emotive, which is actually a thing in the film, and it works) tells Esther about her own experiences with child birth. Those experiences are utterly banal compared to what awaits poor Esther.

Pretty much every review of Proxy mentions the brutality of the opening scene, so I went in expecting the worst. Every cut and camera movement had me on edge. I was waiting for it, but I didn’t know what it was. So, of course, when the film greeted me with a lingering take of a dour-looking pregnant woman, I was uneasy; that unease is protracted for the next hour, with nary a trace of respite in sight. Be warned: this is probably not a good date movie.

Esther leaves the OB/GYN and begins to walk to the bus. While passing an alley, an arm suddenly swings into focus from the right side of the frame and knocks Esther out. The unidentifiable assailant then drags Esther into the alley, observes her for a few long moments (kind of like Michael Meyers in Halloween, except not really), and then proceeds to smash Esther’s belly with a fucking brick.

We stay on Esther’s face at first, with the stomach-churning sound of brick thwacking flesh filling in the empty space, but the camera soon grows restless and moves down, showing us the brick tearing chunks of flesh off of Esther, the swollen bump becoming deformed, misshapen. Few films in recent memory have proclaimed their own esoteric tastes with such dauntless conviction.

But we’re not done yet. We get front row seats to Esther’s C-section (this coming right after I watched the first episode of The Knick, so it was a good weekend). By the time the doctors pull the dead fetus from Esther, which we see via her POV, you’re either buckled in and ready, or you’re desperately looking for the exit.

Director Zack Parker displays dexterous control of tone, as well as an equally keen sense of rhythm. His compositions are tight but not claustrophobic; he frames things cleanly, which keeps the squalid material from becoming bloated and indulgent. By using such careful and handsome aesthetics, Parker has essentially made an exploitation flick into an arthouse film. He possesses a pretty obvious penchant for horror, but this isn’t really a horror movie. It’s certainly horrifying, though, a thriller, of sorts—one of those films upon which people slap the slow burn moniker. It revels in its own morbidity.

Proxy is permeated by a strangely beautiful and careful atmosphere of melancholy. The fear stems from Parker’s ability to sustain disquiet and dread, like a minor chord extended over so many bars. The actors, particularly Rasmussen, look like the fleshy shells of people. We follow Esther through her recovery period, her meetings with other damaged women who seek solace in group gatherings. But the more we learn about Esther and her sad, lonely life, the more the unease swells. Esther makes a friend named Melanie (Alexa Havins), whose son and husband were killed in a car accident. Melanie is great, maybe too great. Parker laces the proceedings with terror and occasionally viscera; he employs gore fairly sparingly, but with unflinching assurance. Same goes for the gorgeous, austere score, which is comprised of deadened piano keys clinking pathetically and some Herrmann-esque strings, buzzing with serrated ferocity. Opaque silences dominate the film, but the music makes its presence known. This is a confident piece of work, from that slow-zoom opening to the Von Trier-esque slow-mo carnage cacophony Parker conducts midway through the film.

I do take some issue with people saying the film is full of plot twists. It’s unpredictable, but only because Parker keeps an imperceptible barrier between us and the characters—a placenta, in a way. It’s not that Parker and co-writer Kevin Donner suddenly unload a bunch of new information upon us, or pull the rug out, or manipulate viewers. They don’t coil the plot in such a way as to render everything unfairly shocking. Parker withholds emotional information from us, the way people are wont to do to strangers; characters seem to exist in a void, and we’re not privy to anyone’s thoughts. Even though we closely follow Esther for the first hour of the film, we never really know her. Gradually, subtle slivers of truth surface, like flotsam from the benthos of Esther’s head. We ascertain that she may have asked her unhinged criminal girlfriend to attack her and kill the child inside her because Esther loves being pregnant, but doesn’t actually want a child. She loves the attention, the smiles, the joy she exudes. People actually like her when she’s pregnant. They want to be near her. Esther’s mental degradation becomes apparent, and the percolating fear, originally derived from the ambiguity of the attack (the detective tells her it’s probably someone close to her), and the possible seduction and manipulation of Esther’s implausibly wonderful new friend, now has a new host.

The second half drags a bit, though it ends with another virtuoso display of disturbing violence delivered like a lucid dream. The weak link here is certainly filmmaker Joe Swanberg, who seems to have missed the stoicism memo. He plays Melanie’s husband, and he tries to emote in the aftermath of a personal tragedy, but he feels like a character yanked from a different film. He acts like a father genuinely in grief, whereas everyone else acts like a cipher. Proxy is a film about non-people existing in an artificial world, and those feeble displays of emotion pull you out of the spellbinding rhythm Parker works so hard to maintain. 

Proxy gets four shattered lives out of five.