Review: Ellie Parker

Way back in June, I made a little mention during my Seattle International Film Festival round-up about the buzz of the crowd coming out of Ellie Parker not being overly positive, and, boy-oh-boy, did I ever have the Naomi Watts fans all over me about that. I promised to see and review the film when it came back to Seattle, and lest you think I went into the film predisposed to dislike it, the truth is actually quite the opposite. I was hopeful, from the comments we received raving about Watts' performance in the film, that Ellie Parker would be a gem; furthermore, I like Naomi Watts as an actress, and so I went into the film wanting and hoping to like it very much. My reaction to the film, though, was somewhat mixed.

Ellie Parker was a mega-low budget film, one of those labor-of-love jobs;  Naomi Watts both starred in the film and produced it. The low-budget effect shows - the film looks really grainy and amateurish at times, like it was filmed by a college kid making a film for a class project, who borrowed his dad's video camera and talked his classmates into acting in it. The film made the rounds of the festival circuit to mixed reviews and now, with distribution by Strand Releasing, it's coming (maybe) to a theater near you.

Ellie Parker was filmed before Naomi Watts became a Big Hollywood Star. She had worked with writer/directer Scott Coffey on Tank Girl and Mulholland Drive, and when he talked to her about his idea for a film about a struggling actress going to a series of auditions, she liked the idea. What you may not know is that Ellie Parker was actually first submitted to Sundance in 2001 (back when nobody really knew who Watts was) as a short film, and then Coffey later expanded it into a feature. I didn't know that going into the screening, but after watching the film, it makes perfect sense; as I was watching it I kept thinking to myself, "wow, this would have been really good as a short".

The best thing about Ellie Parker is Naomi Watts. The film was made when both Watts and Coffey were still struggling in Hollywood, which makes her performance as Ellie all the more raw and real. You can practically feel her pain radiating through the screen as she struggles through a string of demeaning auditions for even more demeaning parts (mostly on Fox shows), all in the name of hoping to reach that brass ring. You have to imagine, watching the film, that Watts called liberally on her own experiences as a struggling Aussie actress in Hollywood in shaping the character of Ellie.

Ellie shuttles between auditions, slipping in and out of characters. No matter how well she does at her auditions, she never seems to get even the tiniest ray of hope that she's making headway. In a city teeming with people, Ellie is practically without a support network; her boyfriend seems to think about her for sex more than anything else, nobody remembers her name, and even her best friend, another aspiring actress, is catty and competitive. Then she catches the boyfriend cheating on her with a casting agent, gets in a car wreck -- geez, is this girl having a bad day, or what? Trivia: the casting chick Ellie's boyfriend screws around with is played by Jennifer Syme, whose own short life in Hollywood was marked by tragedy: her baby with Keanu Reeves was stillborn, and then Syme was killed in a car accident in 2001, at the age of 29.

The trouble with Ellie Parker is there really isn't quite enough script here to flesh out a full-length film; perhaps Coffey had a vision for a full-length story and at some point in the transition from short to feature, that vision got muddled.  Although we watch Ellie from a distance, we don't really get to know her all well enough to care what happens to her. Watts' acting keeps us watching, but without more flesh on the bare bones Coffey sketches of Ellie, it's hard to feel really invested in her. We know she believes in drawing on her past for her acting. She had a rough childhood, with an alcoholic mother, but we aren't given much else. What brought Ellie to L.A.? What drives her?

Where the film really shows its origins as a short is in the story arc (or lack thereof). Ellie auditions. Ellie drives madly through L.A. traffic whilst arguing with boyfriend on cellphone. Ellie auditions again. Ellie changes clothes and makeup while driving on the freeway. Ellie stops in to see her self-absorbed friend. Ellie auditions. Ellie smokes pot and has sex with her boyfriend. Ellie auditions. Ellie catches boyfriend screwing a casting assistant she knows. Ellie freaks. You get the idea. The problem with all these scenes is that any of them would have been fun strung together into a little short, but they don't propel the story forward enough to sustain a feature-length film.

Ellie's character doesn't really develop much either. Sure, Ellie freaks because she's had a crappy few days and decides to quit the movie game altogether, but, like a meth addict let out on parole making a beeline for his dealer, she ends up inexorably drawn right back into the game. If anything, Ellie Parker is almost a cautionary tale for anyone youngster who dreams of Hollywood and a star on that Walk of Fame: Hollywood is a cheap bitch and she will eat you alive, spit you out, and then start all over again. You'd better just stay back in Iowa where your friends are really your friends and your mom's down the block ready to bake you a Brown Apple Betty when you loser of a boyfriend screws around on you.

In spite of its flaws, though, Naomi Watts gives such a strong performance that Ellie Parker manages too shine under its tarnish. She's by turns funny and heartbreaking - often within seconds of each other - and her spunk and vivacity charm even when the script does not. It's easy to see how Watts managed to make her own success story not too long after making this film. If her real-life experiences were anything like Ellie Parker's, I don't know how she had the veracity to stick it out, but I'm glad she did.