Fay Grim: Hartley being neither grim nor foolish

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Fay Grim is a follow-up to Hal Hartley's 1997 indie hit Henry Fool, but if you haven't seen that film (and I certainly recommend that you do), don't worry. You'll be caught up with who's who rather quickly in this fairly fast-moving (for Hartley), playful and sophisticated espionage comedy, which is uneven but still one of his more enjoyable films in years.

Parker Posey's Fay married the titular philosopher Henry (the underused Thomas Jay Ryan) in the last film, sired a child (now 14), then disappeared. Fay Grim, picking up seven years later, opens with Fay discovering via two CIA agents (Jeff Goldblum, who should be in more Hartley movies; The Wire's Leo Fitzpatrick) that Henry is dead. Or so they tell her. Believing Henry's entire literary work was in fact a secretly encoded history of international atrocities committed by multiple governments, they want Fay to find his notebooks (don't ask why, just go with it); in exchange, she wants her brother, Simon Grim (perfect Hartley abettor James Urbaniak) to be sprung from prison. Of course, that's only the beginning, and while the plotting may seem overly complicated it is likely that way on purpose.

The film works as a satire of spy movies, of covert operations, aliases, double-crossing and doublespeak. The items in question - Henry's mysterious notebooks - are basically the film's MacGuffin, the thing which drives the plot but doesn't really matter. What matters is Hartley's telltale dry wit, the banter and the little moments of comedy. With the deadpan comedy style he's perfected over the years, Hartley uses the story as an excuse to take us to various international locations and put Posey's Fay in surreal, dangerous situations.

You will have to adjust to the skewed camera angle in every shot - chosen, presumably, to reflect Fay's disorientation throughout, but it makes you feel like the actors are going to slide out of frame like passengers on a ship on roiling seas. The film also doesn't quite sustain the momentum it establishes early on, with the ending a bit drawn out and convoluted, and a few scenes, especially once the plot takes us to Istanbul, going on too long. But Fay Grim works a great deal of the time thanks in large part to the charm of Parker Posey, who can accomplish more with just a look of distress or a single word response than most actresses. Her Fay here seems 180 degrees from the one in the first film, a trashier sexpot who fell for the subversive Henry. Her character in the new film begins as anxious and over but Posey makes the transition seamless and endearing. The lovely Saffron Burrows and Elina Löwensohn (from Hartley's Amateur and Simple Men) also lend capable support as a British agent and a former paramour of Henry's, respectively. Fay Grim may be a bit stretched but it's got enough to delight Hartley fans in what is clearly his most amusing work since, well, Henry Fool.