Inevitable after reading Atticus Lish's source novel (2014) more than a decade ago. Apparently director Bing Liu was making docos before this, even scoring an Oscar nom for his skateboarders/masculinity-in-Chicago Minding the Gap (2018). Adapted by Martyna Majok, her first such after what appears to be a successful career in theatre and perhaps drawing on her play Queens (2018/2025) and own experience. Plenty of people with deep pockets/connections wanted this made including producer Barry Jenkins, executive producer Brad Pitt, and consulting producer Lish.
As with the book it's essentially a two-hander. Sebiye Behtiyar (in her feature debut) leads as Aishe, a Chinese Uyghur Muslim undocumented immigrant. In a clunky meet-cute street scene she encounters Fred Hechinger's Skinner, recently (and ambiguously) out of the military and looking for some recreation in NYC. What follows is a minor-note romance that is often difficult to fathom. Their connection does not evolve much; we really only learn more about his instabilities but not its causes or prospects for treatment. Notionally they bond over fitness but the scene in the gym is ineffective as we don't see them making a habit of it. The ending is uncertain, and we never really know what he sees in her or what she wants her life to amount to, beyond some kind of self-sufficiency. (He seems content to self-medicate.) While she refuses to reduce him to instrumentality (a meal ticket, a vector to formal US residency) or go all-in on the unsalvageable boy, everyone else exploits her.
The narrative arc is not close to the book's; in fact the themes have been wound back, the teeth filed down to the gums. It lacks the clarity of Lish's prose and edges toward the recurring ever now (Charles Yu's present indefinite) and moralism of an American drug flick.
Most of the time it felt like more effort had gone into the cinematography than the script: there's a lot of arty lighting and fancy shots. It might have worked better as a gritty guerilla shoot amongst the people of uncertain residency in NYC. Emile Mosseri's soundtrack adds to the doom. There's a literal echoing The Outrun (2024) and the precarity is a sedentary version of Souleymane's Story (2024). Both actors did what they could.
A Critic's Pick by Jeannette Catsoulis. I can't agree that "Aishe is driven to achieve legal status and financial security." Peter Bradshaw: three stars.
