GRETA (2019) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

greta (2019) movie

Genre              |   Horror Thriller

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   99 minutes

Released         |   28 February  2019

cast

Isabelle Huppert ... Greta Hideg
Chloë Grace Moretz ... Frances McCullen
Maika Monroe ... Erica Penn
Stephen Rea ... Brian Cody
​Colm Feore ... Chris McCullen

director

​Neil Jordan

writer

​Ray Wright ... (screenplay by) and
Neil Jordan ... (screenplay by)
 
Ray Wright ... (story by)

cinematographer

​Seamus McGarvey

music

​Javier Navarrete

film editor

​Nick Emerson

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box office result

Worldwide               $​18,653,107

Australia                 $​1,005,878

North America        $​10,532,219

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movie minutiae

GRETA premiered at the Toronto International Film Festical in September 2018.

The distribution rights for GRETA were bought at the Toronto International Film Festival by Focus Features for $6 million.

Chloe Grace Moretz and Maika Monroe previously worked together on the YA film THE 5TH WAVE (2016).

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GRETA (2019) MOVIE IMAGES

Images

Posters

Images

Posters

GRETA (2019) STORY SYNOPSIS

Frances finds a handbag on the New York subway and promptly returns it to Greta, an eccentric French piano teacher who loves tea and classical music. Having recently lost her mother, young Frances strikes up a seemingly harmless friendship with the lonely and kindly widow who enjoys her company. But when Greta's behavior becomes increasingly erratic and obsessive, Frances does whatever it takes to end the toxic relationship before things spirals out of control.

GRETA is a 2018 Irish-American horror drama film directed by Neil Jordan and co-written by Ray Wright and Jordan. The film stars Isabelle Huppert, Chloë Grace Moretz, Maika Monroe, Colm Feore, and Stephen Rea.

GRETA (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 27 February 2019

Pop ​Movee Rating

Neil Jordan’s new film GRETA suffers from some of the same kind of deficiencies its titular antagonist demonstrates throughout the acclaimed Director’s latest, albeit low-key psychological tale...

Confused...    Illogical...    Bewildered...

Applied to Isabelle Huppert’s performance as Greta, the three words above should be regarded as positives. The French Actress delivers a stand-out performance. GRETA is watchable thanks to Huppert, whose character becomes more bizarrely entertaining with her increasingly violent behaviour toward her new “friend”, Chloe Grace Moretz’s Frances.

In relation to the overall film, they are appropriate descriptions of how the viewer will feel about some of the creative decisions Jordan makes...

The story struggles to maintain focus and momentum; ultimately, feeling like a lesser version of cinematic predecessors in the “Psycho Thriller” sub-genre compared to benchmark films like Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960), Adrian Lyne’s FATAL ATTRACTION (1987),  Barbet Schroeder’s SINGLE WHITE FEMALE (1992) and Rob Reiner’s MISERY (1990)...

Jordan, who gave audiences one of the great cinematic “reveals” in his 1992 film THE CRYING GAME, directs from a screenplay whose credit is he shares with Ray Wright. Wright’s screenwriting is limited to a handful of TV movies and B-grade Thrillers and there is not much doubt that Jordan has heavily adapted Wright’s story, providing his own narrative interpretation of the plot and its characters.

Other than THE CRYING GAME, Jordan’s most notable screenwriting credits include THE END OF THE AFFAIR (1999), MICHAEL COLLINS (1996) and MONA LISA (1986), but nothing he presents in GRETA comes close to matching any of those previous efforts...

The story can be described as economical, at best.

Jordan appears to have taken the core elements of Wright’s premise and limited the film’s characters and settings in order to concentrate the bulk of the film’s 99 minute running time on the relationship between Greta and Frances.

Jordan’s choice is not without its challenges, as the film’s narrative is entirely reliant upon the authenticity of the relationship between these two characters. There are several scenes that will cause doubt in the viewer’s mind - in terms of processing the interaction between Frances and Greta - and, as a result, story’s credibility is jeopardised.

The decision to cast Isabelle Huppert as Greta is a brave choice...

On first impressions, it’s fair to say Isabelle Huppert seems to struggle with her English dialogue. During one of her opening lines, she struggles to convincingly offer Moretz’s Frances a cup of coffee. Her initial scenes are filled with dialogue delivered in a halting fashion that makes for difficult viewing. Fortunately, the longer the film runs, the more convincing Huppert becomes and, ultimately, the viewer becomes aware of the elaborate ruse Greta has performed (halting dialogue and all) to bring Frances to her home.

Huppert’s performance reveals this very complex, very dangerous character a little piece at a time...

At first, Greta appears to be a lonely old lady, but, before long, she manages to completely overwhelm Frances. There is no part of the girl’s life into which the elder woman doesn’t insert herself or insinuate herself upon her young victim.

The sole reason GRETA can be forgiven its other problems is due entirely to Huppert’s measured transformation from sympathetic “Crazy Cat Lady” to a lethal A1 Nutjob!

Huppert is an acclaimed French Actress whose recent roles have seen her cast as a psychologically damaged figure who struggles to find meaning in her life. She won widespread acclaim for her role as the title character in Paul Verhoeven’s 2016 ELLE, winning just about every major Best Actress Award with the exception of the Academy Award. In that film, her character is more of a protagonist. At first she is a victim, but then, as the story unfolds, Elle becomes more assertive in confronting the violence that has engulfed her family and dominates the events of the film.

In GRETA, Huppert is a motivated antagonist, but Jordan takes some soft narrative options in order to manipulate the story around Greta and get the film to its finale.

At one point in the story, as the film begins its Third Act, two of the supporting characters, Frances’ father and best friend, realise that they have been misled by someone and that the young girl has been missing for several days. Instead of going to the Police, her father, played by Colm Feore, engages a private detective…

What the??????

Why engage real law enforcement when you can hire a two-bit private detective to look for your daughter; who, by the way, has been the victim of a public stalking incident just a few days before?

It’s choices like this that prevent GRETA from being a really great film.

Narratively, the film would have benefited more by being told from a third person perspective or, at a minimum, developed a stronger sub-plot with a law enforcement character who has an awareness that something is not quite right with Greta. This would have provided a more genuine motivation for a supporting character to go in search of Frances.

As it stands, Stephen Rea’s Private Investigator - Brian Cody - feels like he’s be employed into action just so Jordan can give his old CRYING GAME mate a role in his latest film…

Perhaps that’s a little too cynical, but there’s a palpable sense of “viewer manipulation” in Jordan’s story choices as the films moves toward its finale.

The mental disintegration of Frances also feels like a cheat, designed to allow Huppert to launch into full “Fruitloop” mode.

Chloe Grace Moretz is not a bad actress and, for the first half of GRETA, she does some pretty good work as her life becomes increasingly disrupted by the presence of her elderly stalker. Greta’s escalation reaches a tipping point in the restaurant where Frances works and is by far the film’s most frantic and most effective scene. The viewer is witness to the full extent of Greta’s madness, but, for some strange reason, from this point forward, Jordan decides to make Frances completely inept at handling subsequent exchanges with Greta.

Frances becoming more compliant to Greta after this scene is counter-intuitive.

In a final narrative humiliation, Greta is able to physically overwhelm her younger, stronger victim and orchestrate a public kidnapping that sees Frances become a surrogate player in the older woman’s psychosis.

GRETA could have been so much more, but it misses the mark on fundamental story elements and Chloe Grace Moretz just isn’t able to keep up with Huppert’s performance.

The film’s 99 minute running time is also problematic…

It’s very rare to argue in favour of longer running times, as much of what hits screens these days runs well beyond the two hour mark. GRETA, however, feels like it really needed another few minutes to fully explore the mental disintegration of Frances in an effort to provide a deeper, more plausible explanation as to why she surrenders in the way she does throughout the film’s Third Act.

If you’re a fan of “Crazy Stalker Lady” movies, the GRETA is a must see. Huppert does not disappoint and, if nothing else, has one of the most effective self-medicating scenes in recent cinema history!

GRETA MOVIE (2019) USEFUL LINKS

Greta (2018 film) - Wikipedia
​Greta (2018) - IMDb
​Greta (2019) - Rotten Tomatoes

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