Initial festival reactions to Superior drew comparisons to David Lynch and Brian De Palma. It’s easy to see why. An indie psychodrama about twins in a suburban 80s aesthetic, chased by a nebulous evil and rife with dream sequences and identity swapping. Oh, and it’s shot on 16mm film. I understand the comparisons. But how does Erin Vassilopoulos’ debut film stand on its own merits? And are those comparisons actually relevant to what she’s trying to say?
“Have you ever gardened?”
Superior follows twin sisters Vivan and Marian (played by real-life twins Alessandra and Ani Mesa). Marian is a musician on the run from a malevolent ex. We meet her fleeing for her life from Robert (Pico Alexander). She steals his car, runs him over, and flees the scene. She goes somewhere she knows he’ll never look, if he survives at all. Marian goes home.
Vivian hasn’t seen her sister in six years. In that time, she’s become a housewife and homemaker to Michael (Jake Hoffman). They’ve settled into a routine — scheduled sex to maximize chance at pregnancy, the same meals, the same outfits. Vivian is excited to have her sister home. But Marian is odd, shaky. She tells big stories about her band performing in Paris that don’t add up. And she won’t really say why she’s come home.
Eventually, Marian gets a job at a local ice cream shop. But she struggles to maintain the job and yearns to keep making music. So she makes a deal: Vivian will dress and act like her at the job, while Marian will manage the house and work on her songwriting. Initially, both sisters find freedom in one another’s shoes. But someone is still pursuing Marian — and if Vivian isn’t careful, she may get tangled up in something deadly.
“You have to cut the dead parts.”
Superior is light on plot. So much of the film is about following the two sisters along their routines, and then seeing the slight shifts as they swap. At times, it verges on a slice-of-life story, as two sisters who barely know one another live and grow. Particularly in the middle, the plot of the film drops away almost entirely. The film lapses into what feels at times like a deadpan dramedy, particularly when Miles (Stanley Simons), Marian’s boss at the job she takes in town, gets more entwined in their lives without ever realizing which sister is which or what is going on. This middle ground is where the film will lose people, I think.
Early in the film, we crosscut between the sisters without any consideration for the tone. Marian, bruised and blonde, runs for her life down a dark road, chased by a car. Vivian, perfectly made up, vacuums and cooks breakfast. Is this ‘twin telepathy’ as we’ve seen in so many movies like this? Nope. Vivian never really displays any concern for her sister, and finds herself completely shocked when Marian comes home. They’re just two normal sisters who aren’t particularly close.
The film’s shaggy second act, then, tracks the two estranged sisters learning who they have become. The cross-cutting at the beginning helps imbue Vivian’s domestic misery with a similar weight and import as Marian’s attempt to flee from an abusive partner. The aesthetics don’t brighten when we get to the suburbs, and Jessica Moss’ subtle, uncanny score doesn’t let up. Marian flees to the suburbs seeking safety; all she finds, the film seems to say, is a different kind of broken.
“So they can grow back.”
Superior is then, perhaps, a movie about artifice. The conceit of identical twins switching places is a longtime Hollywood trope. Because of its familiarity as a storytelling device, it feels fake — but it isn’t, here. Alessandra and Ani, both excellent in their roles, are twins. Robert has the air of an almost supernatural evil, signs of his impending arrival appearing, dreamlike, over the course of the film. But he’s just a guy. And Michael, poor, dull Michael, collects vintage cigarette tins — only to be furious when he finds that one has been used for its intended purpose.
Everything is a little bit broken, but nothing is as bad as it seems.
And that brings us back to the comparisons — to De Palma, to Lynch, and later, to Hitchcock. Vassilopoulos knows what she’s doing, in evoking these classic filmmakers. She’s setting up certain expectations, expectations the film is utterly disinterested in fulfilling. Trying to trick the audience is a risky maneuver though; go in expecting a thriller only to find a drama about sisters reconnecting will absolutely be alienating to some. And a final act twist playing out almost exactly as you’d expect from the set-up complicates even that idea, as it pulls overtly from a toolbag that will be immediately recognizable to genre film fans.
Ultimately, Superior is intriguing but sloppy. Erin Vassilopoulos’ debut film takes big shots with little ideas in a way that I find genuinely intriguing. But it doesn’t hold together. Vassilopoulos has a talent for atmospheric storytelling, certainly, but the depth — of the narrative, of the imagery, of the emotional intensity — isn’t quite there yet. She’s a talent worth watching, though.
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