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Reviews
Black Bear (2020)
This is what I watched...
Maybe it's just me, and I'm reading more into this than there is, but this is what I saw in this movie. The only "real" part of the movie is Aubrey in the red swimsuit going from the dock to the room with the window to write her movie. Everything else is the early drafts of her movie that she is writing. She starts over at least three times during the movie. Each time we see her in the red suit it's the beginning of a new draft.
The "first" actual draft, when she is shown first arriving at the cottage in the Uber, the dialog is horrible and forced just like an early draft. The characters are constantly changing as she is writing them, so it feels convoluted and wandering. And it's supposed to. She eventually writes herself off a cliff that ends with the black bear. Then Aubrey is back at the dock in the red suit to start another draft. This is probably her morning ritual to start the writing process each day.
This time they are shooting a movie. The director is dumb and cringy at first, but slowly she writes him as a brilliant director eliciting a great performance from his wife while flirting with her costar. The movie scene within the movie has some great performances, but runs into such a favor pitch that it goes off the rails as well, it it's better that the previous draft. Then she's back at the dock, ready to start the next draft...
We are watching the evolution of a written script. It's like the director shot each draft of the film script he's been writing and showed it all to us...
I loved it...