COMPLETE UNKNOWN – Review

Rachel Weisz and Michael Shannon are dependable actors, but the script for the tedious identity drama COMPLETE UNKNOWN gives them flat characters stuck in underdeveloped situations. We’re introduced to Alice (Rachel Weisz), in an opening prologue montage that features her over time in several endeavors – a nurse, a magician’s assistant, and in bed telling a paramour that she’s been a teacher for many years. The rest of the story takes place in one night. Now a frog researcher fresh from a trip to Tasmania, Alice catches the eye of Clyde (Michael Chernus) in a Brooklyn office cafeteria. He immediately invites her a birthday party at the home of his co-worker Tom (Shannon) and his wife Ramina (Azita Ghanizada), a jewelry designer. There’s a dozen or so guests at the party, all entertained by the outlandish Alice, who brags of her accomplishments and confesses that years ago she walked away from her life in the United States to create a new identity for herself overseas. Tom is suspicious, and for good reason; he recognizes Alice as an old flame he knew as Jenny, one who had suddenly walked out of his life fifteen years earlier. Alice initially denies knowing Tom, but eventually fesses up. Someone at the party suggests they all go dancing at a club. Once there, Tom and Alice quickly ditch their group and go for a long walk which runs out the balance up the film. When an older woman (Kathy Bates) walking her dog falls and injures her ankle, Jenny and Tom both pretend to be doctors and accompany her back to the home she shares with her husband (Danny Glover). Reluctant at first, Tom eventually gets drawn into the ruse, enjoying the thrill of false identity (we know this because he says “Wow. I’m completely absorbed”).

COMPLETE UNKNOWN plays like a bad old-school European art film, the kind where a man and a woman engage in low-key longing and endless, sometimes pointless conversation. Plodding and forgettable, so much of the film consists of walking and talking about subjects like regrets and failures and boundaries. Sometimes they talk very slowly and there are long stretches where they furrow their brows and say nothing at all. There are a few flashbacks with pretentious narration and mopey music, but these explain little. Though only 85 minutes, COMPLETE UNKNOWN still feels padded….and endless.

COMPLETE UNKNOWN establishes in Alice a potential femme fatale in what starts out as a set-up for a classic thriller but takes her nowhere interesting. I’m sure Alice, with her blend of beauty and duplicity, has impressed and broken the hearts of many men over the years, but focusing on Tom, and telling her story through his eyes squanders this character. This would have been a better movie without Tom. Here we have this woman who may or may not have accomplished so much, so why would we want to see a story about her stalking a creepy old boyfriend she hasn’t been in contact with for 15 years? Tom is inspired by Alice to examine his own identity, but even as played by the usually unpredictable Shannon, he’s a dullard. I didn’t care about these two people. I found their long conversations poorly-written and I didn’t care whether they made a connection. It’s insinuated that Alice set up this reunion, but it’s never explained why. I kept thinking about Tom’s lovely wife Ramina back at the nightclub. He leaves her behind to go off with this woman. Wouldn’t she be texting him constantly to see where he’s disappeared to? Actually, it’s unclear whether Ramina even went to the club. Everyone else from the party did, but she’s not shown there.  There’s a plot twist I did not see coming because it makes no sense in regards to everything we’ve been told about Alice. It’s not the actors fault. You could charitably say Shannon shows his range by playing such a bore in this one role. Weisz does her best, though the more you know about Alice, the less interesting she becomes. With COMPLETE UNKNOWN, director Joshua Marston and co-writer Jullian Sheppard have made a lousy film but it’s reassuring to be reminded that top-tier Hollywood stars can make bad choices just like the rest of us.

1 of 5 Stars

COMPLETE UNKNOWN opens in St. Louis September 9th exclusively at Landmark’s The Tivoli Theater