Day 2: American Mary (2012)

American Mary
Starring: Katharine Isabelle, Jen & Sylvia Soska, Antonio Cupo
Category: A - New (also foreign / weird)
Plot Tags: Body Modification, Revenge, Going a bit crazy
Original release / release date: September 2012 (festival)
Directed & Written: Jen & Sylvia Soska
Studio: IndustryWorks Pictures (Canada)

Well this one is a little bit of a cheat because I actually saw it at Fantastic Fest about a week and a half ago. I am making a rule for m'self that says anything under three weeks is okay. A fib, but a fib with the best intentions in mind. Onto the film, I saw this at a midnight showing (actually 11:50pm) during Fantastic Fest here in Austin - a great genre film festival chock full of interesting, zany stuff from all over the world. How many film festivals do you know that require winners of various awards to chug a beer out of a stein that is, point of fact, the award itself? That's what I thought.

So I'd read a few write ups about American Mary and was interested in the story and seeing how Katherine Isabelle would do, she of Ginger Snaps many years back. The story centers around Mary Mason (Isabelle), a medical student working/studying to become a surgeon. She is pounded down by an overbearing and mean professor and is constantly hounded by bill collectors and student loan officers. She practices stitching techniques on chicken carcasses, in a cold, funky loft apartment (in a brilliant opening credits scene). In a fit of desperation, she responds to an ad for a strip club and goes in for an escort position. Her audition scene is incredible in that is is profoundly uncomfortable because of her awkwardness and embarrassment punctuated by her bringing a copy of her resume'. This is important because her decided lack of confidence in this scene is bookended by what comes later. The audition is cut short by a situation happening in the basement surrounding what seems to be someone who owes the club money, or drugs, or drug money or some combination of the two. Remembering her medical training, the club owner demands she help, stating 'this is someone we'd very much like not to die tonight' - she resists initially but after an offer of $5000.00 cash, she relents, dons what appears to be an autoshop smock and treats the extensive wounds of the guy on the slab, stabilizes him and gets out of there, cash in hand. She has a minor breakdown back at her apartment, still fairly covered in the blood of the guy she just saved.

Soon after, a worker from the club gets in contact with her about doing a job for a friend. A medical job. This club worker has taken on multiple surgeries to look just like Betty Boop and while the resemblance is there, her overall presence is really creepy. Again, Mary resists but the lure of $10,000 brings her in. The friend wants to resemble a living doll and Mary is to, ahem, remove certain parts and smooth over others to bear this request out. This scene was really unpleasant but not played for exploitation per se. The drifting and lovely classical music in the background offsets the disturbing work going on in, as we find out, a veterinarian's office after hours. From this point forward, things get progressively stranger and stranger as Mary builds her customer base of people desiring body modifications with the means/money to get them done. Her new found finances (and the new clothes they bring) along with her changing demeanor catch the eye of her professor and she is invited to a fancy faculty party. It is very clear very early that this party will not go well and she is quickly drugged (in the first drink she is served), becomes semi conscious and is overcome and sexually assaulted.

She wakes the next morning, stumbles out of the apartment building and at this point she basically breaks from reality. All that follows in terms of her choices and behavior are a direct result of, primarily, the attack and secondly the new found power she has in her medical practice. She builds to exact revenge on her professor, is able to capture him and sets up what could only be described as Misery on steroids. The end of the professor, we think. Mary is a completely different person now - strong and cold. She becomes more bold, performing a complicated limb swapping surgery among other things on two ultra rich German twins (inspired weirdness from the Soska girls) all the while going further away from reality and becoming essentially dangerous and unstable and powerful. Even the intimidating club owner seems to fear her wrath as he grows closer to her.

As with many Shakespearean type stories like this (yes, I would consider this story Shakespearean in nature), absolute power corrupts and Mary does not seem to see the ramifications of her work outside of the patients themselves, or, the potential attention the professor's disappearance would bring from local police. These things hit a profoundly disturbing and intense final act that is a lot to take. Her ascension, violence and total break from reality is such a far cry from the young woman we first meet that it's hard to even recognize her, all steel eyed and cruel. Hats off to Katharine Isabelle for a truly fearless performance that teeters on the edge of crazy for nearly the entire picture. I've left out an awful lot (emphasis on awful) because I think a film like this has to be experienced with discovery versus a checklist. Sufficed to say, it is certainly not for the squeamish as there are many surgery scenes and scenes of pretty heavy violence. But, there is a remarkable performance by Isabelle an interesting story about a field (body modification) that I knew very little about and a lot of black humor to bridge the uncomfortableness of it all. Recommended, but with an asterisk or five. The Soska sisters are a force to be reckoned with and I'll be interested to see what else they do.