Black Bear: When the Director’s Disjointed Design Loses the Viewer
Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear divides itself into two stories, using the same three principal actors and the same lakeside setting while changing their relationships. Through this structure, Levine invites us to consider jealousy, betrayal, and the transformation of personal suffering into art. Yet recognizing those intentions did little to improve my experience of the film. I could identify the subjects Levine wanted to explore without finding a compelling reason for the way he chose to explore them.
The first half follows Allison, played by Aubrey Plaza, a filmmaker arriving at a remote guesthouse for a retreat. Her hosts, Gabe and his pregnant partner Blair, played by Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon, are already in conflict. Their conversations become interrogations, disagreements become provocations, and Allison’s evasiveness makes her presence increasingly difficult to interpret.
Levine builds this section around uncertainty. We are unsure how honestly Allison describes herself, what she wants from her hosts, or how deliberately she contributes to their antagonism. Blair is contentious, Gabe is receptive to Allison’s attention, and the evening develops into a triangle of resentment and attraction.
This approach establishes an expectation. The evasions and confrontations appear to be taking us toward a discovery about these people. Their behavior may be unpleasant, but the film encourages us to watch for what that behavior will reveal.
Allison and Gabe begin a sexual encounter, which Blair interrupts. A violent confrontation follows, leaving Blair bleeding and prompting an urgent drive toward the hospital. The sequence ends in an apparent crash, followed by the transition into the second part.
Throughout this first section, Plaza gives Allison an elusive quality that holds attention. The uncertainty surrounding her character offers more interest than the arguments around her.
Then Levine changes the terms of the film.
The second half places us at a movie production in the same location. Gabe is now a director married to Allison, his leading actress. Blair is her co-star and a source of jealousy. The actors remain familiar, but the relationships through which we understood them have been reassigned.
Levine has described his original conception as placing his protagonist on opposite sides of betrayal: first as the woman disrupting a relationship, then as the woman betrayed. That provides a thematic connection between the halves. It does not establish that we are watching one woman move through successive experiences. The film instead presents two arrangements whose relationship remains uncertain.
The filmmaking setting introduces another subject: the use of emotional manipulation to obtain a performance. Gabe deliberately encourages Allison’s jealousy, treating her distress as something that might improve the movie he is making. Professional demands provide cover for personal cruelty.
That idea has dramatic potential. Yet its introduction also leaves the first half suspended at precisely the moment its consequences should matter most. The injury, the emergency, and the apparent crash cease to move that story forward. We are asked to begin again, carrying our memories of the earlier relationships into a different arrangement without knowing what status to give what we have just watched.
Levine has explained that he considered making the second half explicitly depict the production of the film shown in the first. He rejected that connection as too tidy, preferring to leave open whether one story precedes the other or whether both exist in the writer’s imagination.
That explanation clarifies the decision. It also identifies the source of my dissatisfaction.
By leaving those possibilities unresolved, Levine makes it difficult to determine what accumulates across the film. We can recognize recurring emotions, but the consequences remain uncertain. The second half changes the characters’ relationships without giving the events of the first half a sufficiently meaningful place in the whole.
A film can leave its reality unsettled and still establish emotional stakes. Here, however, the repeated uncertainty kept directing my attention toward the construction. I found myself considering which story might explain the other, rather than becoming more involved in either one. The structure became the dominant subject of the viewing experience.
In the second half, Allison is a demanding actress whose drinking complicates an already troubled production. She argues, struggles through takes, and ultimately delivers the performance required of her.
Aubrey Plaza’s portrayal of Allison remained the film’s strongest asset for me. She makes the actress compelling to watch even when her behavior becomes difficult to tolerate. By the second half, Plaza’s performance was my only compelling reason to continue watching. Yet her acting cannot resolve the structural problem Levine has created. I remained interested in watching Plaza without becoming more invested in how the two halves of Black Bear fit together.
Black Bear never overcame that separation. The first half accumulates suspicion and conflict, then stops. The second turns to jealousy, manipulation, and the demands of filmmaking while leaving the connection between the two open to speculation. Recognizing the parallels provides an explanation of the design, but little satisfaction in the experience.
Levine appears to want the viewer to participate in making meaning. My experience was that he withheld too much of the foundation on which that participation would depend. By the end, I understood why the film could generate competing interpretations. I remained unconvinced that choosing among them would make its characters or their suffering more meaningful.
Black Bear left me with an awareness of its director’s intentions and very little connection to the film he made. Were it not for the strong performance by Aubrey Plaza, the film would be unbearable to watch.
Director:
Lawrence Michael Levine
Main Cast:
Aubrey Plaza (Allison)
Christopher Abbott (Gabe)
Sarah Gadon (Blair)
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