The Thousands

Ever found yourself wondering, “If only there was a film that combined my passion for vintage pornography, international espionage and foxy European ladies with low blood sugar”? The wait is over: Fay Grim is here.

With camera angles thrown constantly askew, performances from a cache of hardcore art darlings (Parker Posey, Elina Löwensohn, Saffron Burrows), and his signature dialogue style as electric as ever, Fay Grim smacks of Hal Hartley’s auteurist vision. It’s a direct sequel to 1997′s Henry Fool, as well as reminiscent of Hartley’s Amateur in its combination of the humdrum domestic with a fantasy of the criminal underworld.

Fay Grim is the perfect introduction to the one-time darling of American indie cinema’s work, providing the climactic velvet punch for themes he has so beautifully danced around for the past 20 years. He demonstrates here, more explicitly than ever, that the political and the personal can never be separated, and that love – as awkward, dysfunctional, un-Hollywood as it is – can still rally against the ever-looming threat of bureaucracy and cliché.