Sometimes going all in doesn’t pay off. The Perfection’s first 30 minutes are a low key enjoyable sensual thriller mystery, with Logan Browning and Allison Williams ushering us through the life of a high octane cellist. Then the movie throws in a bit of crazy. Then a bit more….a bit more…..and a little more on top after that. So what are we left with? A movie that will be a fantasy for some section of the population, but jars heavily with what sucked you into the story in the first place. But hey, at least you’re never bored!
Like it’s main characters, The Perfection starts off as a bit of an enigma. Charlotte (Williams) is clearly going through some sort of emotional crisis after losing her mother, so she jets off to China. She’s invited there by her former cello conductor Anton (Steven Weber), who wants her to judge a cello competition with his newest protege, Lizzie (Browning). Like Charlotte, Lizzie works her ass off to be the best, but this leaves her isolated and friendless. Lizzie enlists Charlotte to backpack through China on vacation with her.
The Perfection so wants to be a lurid onion layer movie like The Hateful Eight or The Handmaiden. In order to execute a good version of this story, you need a great cast, some shocking twists, and loads of tension. The casting is well done. Williams has proven she can carry a host of personas inside of her body, and Logan Browning has killed it selling code switching at a prestigious Ivy League School. The story sets up lots of potential duplicity, and Browning and Williams are pretty convincing in each layer of the onion. The first 30 minutes set up the bonds that tie Charlotte, Lizzie and Anton together pretty quickly but organically to the story, so writer/director Richard Shepard can start layering on the tension. We get some instability with Williams’s emotional state. A sickness. Creepy bugs. An even creepier music stage, etc. The movie’s opening section sets up The Perfection to have the potential to live up to its name, delivering a streamlined story that could go lots of directions.
Then…the story takes a HARD left turn (the shocking twist). Oh, the twist is definitely shocking, but less in a “Whoa! that was really clever!” way and more in a “Wait, so THIS is what this movie is going to be about now?” way. Without spoiling anything, this general plot direction pivots HARD from the opening act. Gone is the subtlety in Browning, Weber, or Williams’s performance. Also gone is the sense of dread or unpredictability, as the twists that come later can be seen pretty easily if you’ve been paying attention. So what will people stay for? The subject matter of the third act creates what some will amount to a dark twisted fantasy that will satisfy a section of the Netflix streaming audience. But some might feel like Lizzie does after her boozy night and accompanying bus ride the next day. At this point, the ceiling of The Perfection is much LOWER than the heights Allison Williams and Logan Browning push the story two with their early connection, which is a bummer.
However, The Perfection always holds your attention, and certainly kept me guessing for a while. And even when the guessing stopped, there’s a little part of me that delighted in the tale that was being told for the big finale. My only wish is that someone used the cello’s bow in some sort of amazing way, either violently or seductively. I’m sure Logan Browning or Allison Williams would have come up with something…