Only the lonely

>> Sad Sue is bleak but engaging viewing

by MARK SLUTSKY

 With her big tortoise-shell sunglasses and scarf-swaddled head, Anna Thomson, as the eponymous Sue, wanders around New York like a latter-day Holly Golightly. But this is no Breakfast at Tiffany's; or rather, it is, were the Blake Edwards film set in a much grimmer, crueler Manhattan, where Holly Golightly wouldn't last a minute.

 Sue, written and directed by Amos Kollek, is a portrait of a strong-willed, free-spirited woman beset by loneliness and alienation. The film begins with Sue losing her job and being threatened with eviction. She unsuccessfully attempts to get a new job and is disappointed at every turn; she strikes up conversations with strangers in futile attempts to make a human connection and resorts in her desperation to anonymous sex. Eventually, hope of salvation of some sort appears when she meets a travel writer, played by Matthew Powers, who seems to care for her. Sue's inability to break out of her self-destructive lifestyle, though, threatens to doom their fragile romance.

 Sue is a bleak film, a portrait of utter loneliness and disconnectedness. But it draws the viewer in, mostly due to Anna Thomson's performance. With an amazingly expressive face that can seem either young and beautiful, or old and tired, she owns the film, rescuing scenes that would otherwise fall victim to cliché and weak writing.

 The same cannot be said of the supporting actors, like the sub-Mickey-Rourkeian Powers. The effect is like seeing a living, breathing person interacting with characters from a bad TV pilot. But for most of the film, this doesn't seem to matter. Kollek goes for the gritty, with hand-held camera shots and lots of scenes in bars, but is generally unobtrusive, leaving Thomson to carry the film on her own, which she does powerfully.

 It's not until the last act that the film begins to fall apart: the episodic structure begins to feel repetitive and grating, and even Thomson's nuanced performance can't quite stop Sue from falling into total pathos. Which is a shame, since it prevents us from really caring about the character's fate just when Kollek brings out the big emotional guns. For the most part, though, Sue is engaging, if brutal, watching. :

 

Sue opens Friday, June 9