Misty Green: Rosalind Eleazar brings ferocious charisma to Chris Rock’s disjointed story of a troubled LA actress

With its A24 distribution, heavyweight supporting cast and opening montage contrasting Hollywood glamour with the poverty on its doorstep, Misty Green arrives adorned with the accessories of prestige indie cinema. But beneath the trappings, Chris Rock’s film has little to say about either the industry it purports to dissect or the woman whose self-destruction it chronicles. 

Rosalind Eleazar plays Misty, an actress whose Emmy for playing “the Black one” in a hit Shonda Rhimes television drama takes pride of place in a living room littered with drugs. She has a precarious arrangement with a wealthy older lover, but that ends abruptly when his death brings his unimpressed widow to her door, demanding she vacate his luxurious beachside apartment within a week. Salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Jordan (Rock), a director Misty once punched on set, who nevertheless offers her an audition for his forthcoming Dreamgirls remake. Topher Grace is wryly effective as her agent, whose mercenary instincts are tempered by a rare dose of common sense. 

Misty, however, has a talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. On the eve of her potentially career-resuscitating audition, she’s snorting cocaine with Zach (Adam Driver) – a sleazy filmmaker whose extracurricular activities encompass drug dealing and pimping – before having sex in a nightclub bathroom. Meanwhile, her troubled brother Jay (Daniel Kaluuya), has recently discharged from psychiatric care. Kaluuya lends a tenderness to a role whose depiction of mental illness otherwise amounts to a grab bag of convenient crises. But while the screenplay keeps piling indignities and bad decisions upon its heroine, Eleazar finds a bruised humanity beneath the chaos. Hers is a performance of such ferocious charisma that Misty’s appeal remains entirely comprehensible, even when her behaviour becomes indefensible. 

Rock is keenly aware that economic exploitation in Hollywood intersects with race and gender. But his screenplay is less interested in this reality and its consequences than in repeatedly informing Misty, and us, that she needs to grow up. Its gestures towards psychological complexity are continually undercut by a simplistic, punitive attitude towards her sexuality and self-sabotage. The result is a character study that mistakes the accumulation of character flaws for insight into character. 

The comedian’s linguistic rhythms translate awkwardly into drama, with scenes strung together by quips rather than propelled by any convincing emotional logic. Rock himself is particularly wooden as Jordan, dispensing wisdom with the distracted, shallow insight of a man reading inspirational quotations off cue cards. His dreamy California is beautifully rendered in honeyed sunlight, its seductive surfaces promising depths the film never discovers. Rock knows how to make a film look important. Making it mean something proves rather more elusive. 

► Misty Green is in UK cinemas now.