The Marielle Heller Movies Ranked
Director Marielle Heller has steadily displayed a continuity of powerful themes and relatively strong visual language across the five movies she has made in the nine years since 2015. I first became aware of her work with the Melissa McCarthy starrer CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (more on that soon of course) and learned of her background in acting. Before and since that 2018 release, Heller has yet to make a less than good film, and has made a couple of great ones as well.
#5 — NIGHTBITCH (2024)
Now, NIGHTBITCH is indeed that Heller film that comes in at just about “good,” which also came after the biggest gap between her works at four years. Following a postpartum stay-at-home mom (Amy Adams) who starts experiencing surreal symptoms, the movie doesn’t quite build satisfyingly from its initial eerie tone. But I understand that is in some ways faithful to the source novel by Rachel Yoder. NIGHTBITCH defies easy categorization in its genre and approach and that is as intriguing as it is a bit muddled. Adams gives a great performance and many of her social interactions are powerfully awkward, as intended. The cluelessness of her husband (Scoot McNairy) fits into this pattern, but ultimately, the movie is less ferocious than its title might imply. There is a pleasant surprise in how NIGHTBITCH reconciles its central character’s internal strife and monologues, but the ultimate effect of the movie isn’t as incisive as Heller’s others.
#4 — WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME (2020)
I always struggle to evaluate filmed stage acts as film. WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME documents Heidi Schreck’s play of the same name that feels more like a one-person-ish show. Heller’s coverage of the stage, from its full span to closer angles of Schreck’s face, is edited effectively and gives the kind of performance insights a filmed play should give. There are even a couple of really striking shots that go beyond the established mise-en-scène of the stage play, with Schreck and 14-year-old debate opponent Rosdely Ciprian shot from behind, conversing within the black void of the theater beyond. But the value of WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME really is the capturing of the series of Schreck’s funny, insightful, and emotionally stirring monologues. At once furious and reconciliatory, the play brilliantly rethinks the American Constitution competitions in which a teenage Schreck participated by shedding the propagandistically positive prompt of earlier decades and truly making a personal connection to the Constitution. WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME isn’t electric in terms of filmic technique, but the experience of viewing it is absolutely moving.
#3 — THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL (2015)
THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL was Heller’s directorial debut, but that doesn’t apparently inhibit it. The film wonderfully captures the 1970s San Francisco setting with warm tones, intimate close-ups, and convincing costumes and production design. A few sequences impressively integrate animation into the live action with great emulations of the underground comix aesthetic, a world in which the central character Minnie (Bel Powley) becomes increasingly invested. But THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL’s primary concern is Minnie’s sexual relationship with her mother’s boyfriend (Alexander Skarsgård). Skarsgård is absolutely convincing as a true scumbag who attempts to come off as sensitive, arty, and free, part of an aging counterculture to which Minnie’s mom (Kristen Wiig) has irresponsibly returned, cocaine and all. I really like Heller’s work, but a blanket criticism I could aim at her films is they often skew a little too close to the flatter digital look of today. The same cannot really be said of THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL, which uses subdued colors and soft light to its aesthetic advantage instead of a default look. And ultimately, although I was never a teenage girl, Minnie’s journey to discover herself and break free of the listlessness present in her mother is resonant.
#2 — A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD (2019)
If you were to generalize about Heller’s thematic concerns in her works, you could broadly assign the “women’s issues” label. I think her movies that deal with more specific notions within that category are more nuanced than that phrase may imply, but an exception to that gendered focus is A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, a Fred Rogers biopic starring Tom Hanks. But then, it’s not really a biopic, and it’s not really so different in substance from Heller’s other films. It too deals with apparently broken people trying to find themselves in a confused and overwhelming world. But in perhaps the film’s most powerful scene, Hanks’ Rogers tells Matthew Rhys’ troubled journalist, assigned to do a profile on the closest thing American pop culture has to a saint, he doesn’t actually see a broken person. A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD is nowhere near a cradle-to-grave story (an approach that usually puts me off movies about real people) and is indeed more focused on Rhys’ Lloyd Vogel, inspired by journalist Tom Junod and his 1998 profile on Rogers. There is more value to a documentary when dealing with a singular figure, such as Morgan Neville’s WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? (2018; for all the problems I may have with Neville), but Heller shows how fictionalized works should be done in this era of oversaturated biopics. A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD is indeed beautiful, capitalizing on a shorthand we all have for Mister Rogers, sure, but also drawing out a stirring human story on its own account.
#1 — CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (2018)
CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? is another movie based on a real person and deals with a longer span of time than A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, but I also wouldn’t call it a biopic of its central figure Lee Israel. Israel was a failing author who turned to forging letters from famous dead writers and selling them in the early 1990s. Heller, from a script co-written by Nicole Holofcener (who was initially attached to direct!), depicts this creep into illegal activity thrillingly, even if it isn’t deeply evil or violent or anything. McCarthy as Israel is incredible and her performance certainly shines out among her array of roles that are a bit too similar to each other. She is awesomely complemented by Richard E. Grant as her “gay best friend,” although this relationship is by no means conventional and is full of great insulting banter. CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? certainly features Heller’s most complicated protagonist and that’s part of what makes it so compelling. It fosters a likeability, or perhaps simply a deeper understanding, of an obviously flawed person. Israel’s behavior, or at least McCarthy and Co’s version of it, is a negative version of the path any of Heller’s other characters could have taken to get out of the mire of self-doubt. The movie’s muted color palette reflects this, even as it sometimes underwhelms with what could have been stronger visual moments. But ultimately, CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? is excitingly structured and compellingly performed, standing as Heller’s best film yet.
