Who are you? I mean, who are you really?
Away from the public spotlight, in those quiet moments when it’s just you and your existential angst, and particularly in today’s hyper-connected world, where Facebook and Instagram are temporarily foregone, WHO … ARE … YOU?
It’s an intense, penetrating and ultimately revealing question, if you’re really being honest with yourself and Ingrid Goes West asks it repeatedly, at turns wittily caustic, others incisively understanding, but always brutally, revealingly and oft times, amusingly honest.
To some extent all of us adopt created personas, overlaying our natural selves with varying degrees of confected self, depending on the group of people or situation.
But Ingrid, portrayed masterfully by Aubrey Plaza with a mix of manic charm and trippy vulnerability, seems to be almost entirely composed of artifice.
That’s not completely true of course as we see at the end of this bitingly insightful satire on modern society’s propensity to value the conjured up over the authentic, but whatever Ingrid’s true self, it’s almost always put aside in favour of the made-up person she projects to others.
Whether it’s rampantly low self-esteem or mental health issues or a mix of both powering her inclination to value the imagined over the actual – case in point is her relationship with Dan (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), first her landlord then her boyfriend whose real feelings for Ingrid and his likeably down to earth personality are near-constantly put aside in favour of other friendships and a persona entirely of his quirky girlfriend’s choosing – Ingrid is more apt to live in a world of her making rather than the real one that often unsuccessfully tries to make its presence felt.
So enamoured is she of what she imagines rather what is real that she moves across country to Los Angeles, after cashing in her inheritance from recently-departed mother – her mourning of her mum’s death is one of the few real things about the film’s titular character – to become “friends” with Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), an Instagram personality of whom there seems to be a commercially-endorsed abundance these days.
You would recognise Taylor immediately if you actually came across her in person, which Ingrid, thanks to the object of her stalker affection splashing every shop and restaurant she visits across the length and breadth of Instagram – she is vapidly enthusiastic, declaring every person, thing and moment she comes across to be “THE BEST!”.
It looks idealistically perfect in every way – she has the dream artist husband Ezra (Wyatt Russell), man bun and all, the gorgeously-accented house, she eats and buys all the things her sponsors nominates, moving from one fabulously-chronicled moment to the next.
It’s just what Ingrid ordered, and so after kidnapping Taylor’s dog to create a meet-cute situation, she becomes Taylor’s new best friend, her confidante, the doyenne of her Instagram-blessed inner circle … until, of course, the inevitable happens and a new shinier, brighter, more photogenic person comes along.
Then Ingrid, who is as brittle as they come beneath her flashy curated persona falls into himself, a process accelerated when the truth of her stalking comes to light.
At every stage of director Matt Spicer’s savagely-nuanced film, which he also co-wrote with David Branson Smith, Plaza delivers up a protagonist who, though on the surface is ballsy and brave, is really only ever one slight or half-baked interaction from existential collapse.
When the real world breaks in on her virtually-curated lifestyle, anchored as it is to Taylor almost exclusively – so blinkered is she by her “all eggs in one basket” approach that she fails to notice how much chemistry she and Dan share and how he could really be the basis for the contented life she yearns for – it is devastating for Ingrid who has bought the Instagram confection hook, line and high-end, kale-washed sinker.
Ingrid Goes West almost never puts a foot wrong.
It is unremittingly satirical in its approach, casting a withering eye on the foibles of everyone involved, but also measured enough to also note the rare moments of authenticity when they come through (although they are quickly swept aside for the latest curated moment).
For instance, whatever you think of the superficiality and vapid banality of Taylor and Ezra’s lifestyle, which is nowhere as happy or picture-perfect as it looks (all the hashtags in the world can’t cover up the relational fissures that exist), at least there is a certain realness to it.
Sure, it’s cemented under a torrent of stylised eggs and avocado on toast brunches, and faux-intellectual posturing and a near-nauseating amount of plasticised excitement, but they are, at least true to themselves, even if, as a drunk Ezra observes one night, it’s all built on a lie.
Ingrid too, for all her artifice and unsettlingly dark stalker-ish behaviour, does have an authentic beating heart but it’s eclipsed at almost every turn by her neediness and willingness to do what it takes to get what she thinks she wants.
When you do see it, and it’s mainly in the presence of Dan who seems able to draw it from her like magic – at one point she asks him incredulously why he likes her, amazed that someone would actually want her without her social media-airbrushed persona – it grounds her character, granting her a vulnerability and aching emotional brittleness that explains her more outlandish and unnerving moments.
It’s that willingness to craft three-dimensional, fully-formed characters for what could have been a tin-eared satire that makes Ingrid Goes West work so very well – it’s biting, it’s dark & bleak, but it’s also damn funny and touching, a portrayal of our modern cult of confected self that is as perfect as the Instagram accounts it so effortlessly and brilliantly satirises.