Director Jenna MacMillan‘s “The Snake” is the kind of scrappy indie comedy you tend to stumble across at film festivals that feels a little messy, a little strange, and very character-driven.
Written by and starring Susan Kent, the film follows Jamie (Kent), a chaotic forty-something who just cannot seem to get her life together no matter how hard she tries. Jamie’s life basically explodes when she clashes with her venomous mother Anne (Robin Duke) and ends up evicted from what she believes should be her inheritance: her late Nana’s bright pink house.
From there, the movie sends Jamie spiraling through a series of increasingly questionable living situations, including breaking into the house to reclaim it, trying (and failing) to crash with her punk-rock ex who now lives in a van, and temporarily staying with her best friend (which goes about as badly as possible when Jamie hooks up with the friend’s husband). It’s a journey that’s not exactly picture perfect.
The movie aims for an offbeat dark comedy tone, and for me that mix didn’t always land. There are a few solid one liners that genuinely made me laugh, but a lot of the humor pushes so far into awkward or uncomfortable territory that it sometimes becomes more painful than funny. It’s one of those films where the joke seems to be how far the situation can spiral, which is a trend that’s highly annoying.
What did work for me was Jamie as a character. She starts off pretty unlikable. She’s impulsive, selfish, and constantly making terrible decisions, but somewhere along the way she started to grow on me. She’s messy and flawed, but also weirdly relatable in that she keeps on trucking even when life keeps knocking her down at every single turn. She isn’t exactly a lovable underdog, but she certainly keeps trying. The film really leans into the idea that people are partly victims of circumstance and partly responsible for their own chaos in life.
I can’t say I loved “The Snake,” but I did find some things to enjoy. The comedy didn’t quite click for me, and the tone sometimes feels like it’s fighting with itself. But Jamie is such a complicated, frustrating, and oddly sympathetic character that I still found myself rooting for her by the end. Even if the movie isn’t fully successful, the character at its center definitely stands out.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 