Julia Hart, the screenwriter of The Keeping Room, last year’s revisionist feminist Western thriller (for lack of any better catch-all description), switches gears entirely in her follow-up film Miss Stevens, which she co-wrote and makes a debut as a director.
Rachel Stevens (Lily Rabe) is a high school English teacher who appears to be at loose ends in her life when she agrees to chaperone three students to a drama competition taking place out of town over the weekend. What’s left vague and undefined about Miss Stevens’ current malaise is compensated for by the sharply detailed personalities of her three students. During the weekend, each kid experiences an emotional low point which Miss Stevens manages to see them through, all while making some inappropriate decisions of her own.
The film’s greatest assets are the actors. The three kids (Timothée Chalamet, Lili Reinhart, and Anthony Quintal) deliver naturalistic performances, but it’s Lily Rabe (American Horror Story) that you can’t take your eyes off of. She may never successfully articulate the source of her character’s discomfort with life, but in a way that reminds one of her mother Jill Clayburgh, Rabe’s face and body language are fascinating to watch grappling with a problem. There’s always something roiling beneath the surface.
Miss Stevens
Narrative Feature Competition, World Premiere
Sunday, March 13, 2:15pm, Alamo South Lamar
Wednesday, March 16, 5pm, Alamo South Lamar
This article appears in March 11 • 2016.
