Sarah Michelle Gellar

RETURN NEVER LETS GELLAR OUT OF THE BAG

Rather than snow us with all manner of familiar tricks designed to help us identify with the protagonist as soon as cinematically possible, The Return gambles absolutely everything on intrigue. Ambiguity rules over nearly every scene and Joanna (Sarah Michelle Gellar), our heroine, is consistently held at arm’s length.

We’re unsure what drives her actions and given only the most miserly fragments of biographical information to go on. As she becomes increasingly haunted by visions of places she’s never been and voices she can’t identify while travelling on business to her home state of Texas, we’re never able to fully trust her as our guide.

Why can she not rid her car stereo of Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams”? Why does she keep seeing the wrong face in the mirror? Why is she cutting herself? Is she in touch with spirits? Is this all the result of some obscure trauma? Is she just nuts? Do director Asif Kapadia or screenwriter Adam Sussman actually know where they’re going with all this?

The answer, I’d argue, to that last question is more or less, though I might be just about the only critic to offer even that mild a commendation. But then, many critics chose to ignore The Return entirely-and given the quality of most spooky movies being churned out of the studios lately, I can’t say I blame them.

The Return is a modest but perfectly admirable little thriller. Its gets silly now and then-the Patsy Cline thing does feel like a tired device-but its strange resolution, delivered in a long, silent montage, is weirdly satisfying. While on one hand Sussman is perhaps too cagey for his own good, finally leaving at least one major plot development permanently shelved, it’s to the story’s benefit that he errs on the side of excessive paring down. Kapadia’s low-key approach to the material is refreshing, exhibiting confidence with the genre and an unusual degree of trust in the audience to do their own thinking.

It’s entirely possible that my friendliness to The Return is as contingent on my ignorance of Gellar’s work as it is on my low expectations or comfort with ambiguity. Gellar’s been a household name for so long now-largely, it seems, as a result of Buffy the Vampire Slayer-that I actually had to comb through her filmography to realize I’d never seen a single thing she’s done. So while some viewers weary of this bird-like TV star may have made up their mind about her performance in The Return before it even starts, I was happy to carry no preconceptions. I found her cool, reserved performance perfectly appropriate. V

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The Return
Directed by Asif Kapadia
Written by Adam Sussman
Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar,
Peter O’Brien, Adam Scott, Sam Shepard