Critics reviews

The reverberations from the contours of this complex, intense story are mighty, intertwining the power of creating fictions with the lure of living them, the failures of family life with the urgent desire for belonging, the frustration of a marginal existence and the yearning for a place in the world, the connection of identity and memory.

What the film is finally about is not whether or not Nancy will inflict damage, but whether these lonely people can receive true grace. In this respect and several others, “Nancy” exhibits a seriousness of purpose that’s rare in American movies today.

If you can look beyond the horrendous, wig-like thicket that clings to the head of the title character in “Nancy,” you might see something to admire in the movie’s uncompromising portrait of extreme misery. On the other hand, you might simply be weary of wincing at the visions of filmmakers (in this case, Christina Choe) intent on rubbing our noses in lives ungraced by a single second of loveliness or joy.

Much of what happens and resonates in Nancy occurs on the face of its star, Andrea Riseborough — so much so that it could be tempting to dismiss the movie itself as a trifle or an interesting idea undeveloped. But I’d urge any viewer to look closely at the lead actress. The emotional journey of the story— and it’s a fairly dramatic one — comes alive and gathers force through her expressions. She _is_ the movie.

Nancy is another inadvertently condescending fantasy of how people who can’t afford to go to film festivals live, and there’s vanity in this boutique art-film brand of hopelessness, which derives from a fetishizing of “keeping it real.”