“Wildcat”

Born and raised in the Carolinas, it was a given that I’d grow up reading the works of author Flannery O’Connor, a writer who perfected the Southern Gothic style. Her unsettling short stories often featured disturbed characters and ominous acts of violence, complete with heavy religious and regional themes that explored human morality and faith. Even with low expectations, co-writer and director Ethan Hawke‘s O’Connor biopic “Wildcat” is a complete mess of a movie. Featuring two borderline incompetent lead performances and a script that is too far out there, this is one of the more surprising disasters of 2023.

The film follows the life of O’Connor (Maya Hawke) while she was struggling to publish her first novel and conveys her determination to make her mark on the literary world. It bridges pieces of her fictional works with her actual battle with a lupus diagnosis at 24, wrestling with her Roman Catholic faith, and attempting to reconcile with her mother (Laura Linney) in Georgia.

Hawke is a skilled filmmaker, but here he tries to inhabit and interpret O’Connor’s mind and it doesn’t go well. By using excerpts from the author’s original stories, novels, and notes from her personal journals, Hawke (and co-screenwriter Shelby Gaines) assemble an impressive catalogue of what made O’Connor tick. The issue is in the storytelling, which is a total failure.

Hawke decides to blend a straight biopic with vignettes of O’Connor’s writing, retelling her stories with Linney and Hawke playing multiple roles. This comes across as gimmicky and at times, goofy. The fictional stories don’t work because they’re too slow and abstract, but at least the non-fantasy scenes of O’Connor’s life are more interesting (and understated).

The performances are rough, and as much as I love Hawke, she doesn’t quite yet have the acting chops to carry a dramatic lead role. There’s a lot of screaming and crying and overacting, and her turn as Flannery feels labored and generally uncomfortable (despite how charismatic she may be in other projects). You will also never convince me that Linney is anything more than a barely competent actor, and here she’s dialing it up to an 11. There she is in scene after scene, unhinging her jaw and swallowing so much of the scenery that there’s nary a crumb left. Her performance is even more strained and exaggerated than usual, as she apparently is incapable of any modicum of subtlety. What’s worse is that Linney (along with Hawke) are tasked with playing a menagerie of different characters and when it’s not unintentionally funny, it’s all extra taxing on the viewer.

As in O’Connor’s writing, there is a lot of talk about religion and faith as she struggles with her “scandalous” stories and the aching need to serve God. The film reflects her Catholic beliefs and challenges to the religious definitions of ethics and morality (including a scene of Jesus uttering the “n” word). It’s heavy on faith-related (and racial) themes, but Hawke doesn’t make the sort of profound statement about religion and society that he thinks he does. He may be trying to get into the author’s head, but his attempts to tie real life with fiction really misses the boat.

“Wildcat” is nicely directed, but the performances and convoluted storytelling are what tank this movie. Perhaps the literary art house crowd the film was obviously made for will find more to like about it than I did.

By: Louisa Moore