Ingrid Goes West (15) dir. Matt Spice
Photo by Hans Vivek on Unsplash
Every single day I follow people I don’t really know. I watch them eat, party, work out, hang out with their friends, cuddle up at home, etc. And you probably do this too. This is the world we live in thanks to social media and something that ‘Ingrid Goes West’ exploits to full effect.
The titular Ingrid (Audrey Plaza) is a depressed loner whose social media habit hinges on obsessive. Plaza was made for this type of role and her performance succeeds in making Ingrid both a sympathetic and disturbing character. The last film I saw Plaza in was the phenomenally terrible ‘Bad Grandpa’ (nobody can get out of that film unscathed) and Ingrid Goes West demonstrates how she has been so criminally underutilised before and deserves much bigger roles than the ‘crazy hot girl’ (yes she’s both ‘crazy’ and ‘hot’ in this but in a manner inkeeping with both the character and the actor).
After having been rejected by her former Instagram crush, Ingrid latches onto LA hipster and social influencer, Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen). Using the money left over from her mother’s passing, Ingrid ‘goes west’ where she manages to infiltrate her way into the life of Taylor and Taylor’s ‘artist’ husband (an amicable Wyatt Russell). This section of the film where Taylor and Ingrid begin their ‘friendship’ in LA is one of the strongest of the film and contains continuous amusing pokes at the social media generation. Everything is shot with a hazy Instagram filter, except for bursts of millennial pinks and rose golds; characters sip from mason jars, high art is painting hashtags over better paintings, Ingrid’s affable landlord (O’Shea Jackson Jr) vapes instead of smokes, and one waiter asks Ingrid how he can ‘nourish her today’. LA looks gorgeous, Taylor looks gorgeous and Taylor and Ingrid’s friendship is Instagram gorgeous already (two clear-skinned, thin, beautiful blondes ready to take on the world). But their friendship is as fake as anything Taylor posts on Instagram and it won’t take much to push Ingrid over the edge. The addition of Taylor’s blatantly unstable brother, Nicky (a great, unhinged performance from Billy Magnussen) to the mix is surely going to turn Ingrid’s Instagram fairy-tale into a nightmare.
Whilst it would be easy to dismiss Ingrid as a very ill person and Taylor as her victim, Taylor’s use of social media is also telling about who she is (or rather, isn’t) as a person. Because, whilst Ingrid is ‘crazy’, she is at least real. Taylor doesn’t read the books she claims to, does everything for the sake of a photo (at one point, Taylor forces a stranger to crawl on the dirt to get a perfect shot) and eerily sometimes repeats the exact same lines of dialogue as if there is nothing but a social media script drummed into her brain. There is nothing beyond her eyes and Olsen does a great job at exuding just how creepy that is. Whoever the real Taylor is disappeared a long time ago and there’s a chance she’s not even sure herself. Moments of genuine humanity in the film are rare and it is up to O’Shea Jackson Jr’s sweet performance to offer us some reassurance that there is still life out there. Thus, the film, whilst sly and comedic, is also uncomfortable and depressing. It holds a mirror (selfie?) up to how social media can command our lives and emphasise our feelings of loneliness, isolation, and envy. And it does so with a glossy, flawless, sheen that refuses to mask the darkness at the centre of the picture.
4/5
Go see it if you liked/follow it with…The Social Network, Black Mirror, Enduring Love, King of Comedy and Single White Female.
Don’t go see it if…you can’t cope with the possibility you should maybe delete your Instagram account after seeing the film #unsettled.
Obsessive film watching 