[“Her Smell” is a Times Critic’s Pick. Read our review.] With looping tracking shots that capture the sweaty backstage claustrophobia of a rock club, as well as the drain-swirl of addiction, the film was inspired by a diverse group of artists, including Guns N’ Roses, Jawbreaker, Nirvana, Bikini Kill and L7, Perry said. Moss’s list of references added Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe and more. And then there’s Courtney Love, whose look, style and antics as the lead singer of Hole most closely mirror the chaos of Becky and her band, Something She. Moss, who learned guitar and piano for the part, spoke by phone recently about missing out on punk, her penchant for dark roles and where Love fits into the “Her Smell” universe. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. What do you remember about riot grrrl and grunge as it was happening? I was a ballet dancer since I was like 5 years old, and around that time I would’ve been 11 or 12. I was just not on that train. I remember hearing the most popular ones — Nirvana and stuff like that — on the radio. But it seemed like something for older people and definitely cooler people. And I don’t think I really understood it. I was a pretty happy kid. So when I approached this, I was really honest with Alex, like, “This is a whole world that I don’t necessarily understand.” I know there was a syllabus, as well as an email chain of reference points. Was there anything in particular that grabbed you? I think for me, watching a lot of old backstage, behind-the-scenes documentaries, just trying to get a feeling for that time. I was looking for something that I could emotionally connect to and feel that anger and that passion. [Agyness Deyn, who co-stars as Moss’s bandmate] was really instrumental in Gayle [Rankin, who rounds out the trio] and I’s journey into the music. She’s so in that scene and knowledgeable, and we were like, I don’t know, “Blink-182, is that a thing?” I would listen to L7 and Bikini Kill, but Elastica was the one that really bridged the divide for me between the most popular and the most authentic.<doc-sep>Starring Elisabeth Moss as a riot-grrrl rock-diva who, when we first meet her, seems to be well on her way to drinking and drama-queening herself to death, the movie “Her Smell” is a fierce and intoxicating performance sloshing around in a half-empty Solo cup of a movie. Set mostly in the 1990s, and centering on Moss’s Becky Something — the pseudonymous lead singer of a punky all-woman rock trio named Something She — the movie by writer-director Alex Ross Perry (“Listen Up Philip”) invites us to observe the degradation and redemption of an artist close up, without first giving us a reason to care. (Never mind that it also fails to convince us, until it’s way too late, that the main character actually is an artist.)<doc-sep>You may not see a better movie with a worse title this year than “Her Smell.” Scratch that, actually; the title’s perfect. It’s the name of the rock club where we meet the pop supernova that is Becky Something (a mesmerizing Elisabeth Moss), who fronts an all-female punk band called Something She. But it also captures something of the acrid effect she has on anyone who crosses her path. Becky is more than just another over-indulged, over-liquored celebrity narcissist; she’s a bad mood, a toxic atmosphere, a cloud of rage, self-pity and unbridled malice that comes rolling off the screen in thick, annihilating waves. In a word, she reeks. That’s not an orthodox recommendation, to be sure, and this movie — a blistering, exhilarating eruption of raw talent and nerve from writer-director Alex Ross Perry — may well send you screaming from the theater, ready to embark on a violent bender of your own. For the better part of two hours, we watch as Becky undergoes the mother of all backstage meltdowns, finally self-destructing with such spectacular, lacerating fury that she rips a hole in the picture and leaves you wondering if you can trust the glimmer of redemption that remains. Turns out you can. Perry, who previously cast Moss in his dramas “Listen Up Philip” and “Queen of Earth,” can be a pitiless anatomist of the human psyche, but also a disarmingly sincere one. A funny thing happens when he throws a frame around Becky, who, like any number of real-life and fictional musicians who have crashed and burned, is never not performing. She’s a virtuoso construct, a brash and incorrigible persona masking a bundle of insecurities. She is also a reminder that someone we might not care to spend five minutes with in real life can turn out to be riveting, even rewarding cinematic company. Advertisement And the movie itself, structured in five long acts that play out in unflinching real time, strains and stretches to make itself worthy of her, lurching for greatness and getting there with time to burn. Perry has invoked Shakespeare and Guns N’ Roses as inspirations, while Becky often brings to mind Courtney Love, with her blond locks and a grin that looks as though it could devour the world. “I always flirt with death” are the first lyrics we hear her sing, after which she chucks the guitar and heads backstage, the camera plunging after her as though into the abyss. Agyness Deyn, left, and Gayle Rankin in the film “Her Smell.” (Donald Stahl / Gunpowder & Sky) Something She, a ’90s riot grrrl sensation, has seen happier days. (Perry shows us some of them in brief home-video flashbacks sprinkled between acts.) The sold-out arenas are gone, and the band now plays smaller venues that are nonetheless still jammed with loyal fans. We often hear the roar of the crowd reverberating through the club walls, joining with the low, unnerving rumble and eerie electronic flourishes of Keegan DeWitt’s score. It sounds like background noise, or it could be the dark voices in Becky’s head as she flails from one miserable encounter to the next, verbally incinerating everyone in her midst. Her bandmates and best friends, Marielle (Agyness Deyn) and Ali (Gayle Rankin), are used to being in the line of fire. So is the band’s long-suffering manager, a professional mollifier amusingly named Howard Goodman (Eric Stoltz), and Becky’s ex, Danny (Dan Stevens), who’s made the mistake of bringing his new girlfriend backstage. It was an even bigger mistake to bring Becky and Danny’s adorable toddler (Clive Piotrowicz), and you fear for the child whenever Mama picks her up, cackling and sticking out her tongue in a freaky but cursory display of affection. Becky’s affection might be scarier than her rage. This venue, with its harrowing vibes and sulfurous, coked-up atmosphere, is no place for a child. As shot by cinematographer Sean Price Williams in dim neon lights and corridor-snaking camera movements that bring a Gaspar Noé hellscape to mind, it’s not really a place for smart, responsible grownups, either. Becky has brought in a religious shaman (Eka Darville) to detect and clear away other people’s bad auras, but it’s she who needs an exorcism — one that is slowly set in motion when those closest to her finally decide they’ve had enough. The first three acts of “Her Smell” are like the proverbial slow-motion train wreck. The action shifts to a recording studio, where Becky’s latest histrionics are holding the group’s long-delayed album hostage. Her bandmates abandon her and are replaced in short order by a trio of young punk sprites (played by Cara Delevingne, Ashley Benson and Dylan Gelula), who’ve showed up to record an album of their own. Becky woos them into her destructive orbit, but her attempt to use them to stage her own comeback is doomed to backfire. Dan Stevens and Clive Piotrowicz in the movie “Her Smell.” (Donald Stahl / Gunpowder & Sky) Cue Act 3, which switches to another ill-fated concert, where Becky undergoes a cataclysmic breakdown, her face a pained blur of glitter and eye shadow, tears and blood. Moss is galvanizing, scary and very, very funny; she makes Lady Gaga in “A Star Is Born” look like even more of a Cinderella saint among pop divas, and for sheer hell-raising intensity, she eclipses Natalie Portman in “Vox Lux.” She has never been afraid to go deep and dark; from “Mad Men” to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” she’s been one of the best actors in television for a while. Her film work, a juicy recent role in Jordan Peele’s “Us” notwithstanding, hasn’t earned her as much attention, a situation that “Her Smell” deserves to remedy. Advertisement What’s remarkable about this star turn — apart from Moss’ more-than-convincing embodiment of Becky’s talent in three musical performances, each one crucial — is that it’s beautifully modulated even at its most unhinged. Becky grins and cackles like a demon one minute, then drops scarily silent the next. Her arias of verbal abuse are startlingly lucid and hyper-eloquent, peppered with all manner of baroque alliteration and goofy wordplay. (It would kill the joke to explain, but “Inward, ho!” is still making me laugh several days later.) Perry has his show-offy impulses as a writer, but Moss is so good she sells them as the character’s own. Becky may suck all the oxygen out of a room, but Moss’ demented energy keeps generating new beats for her excellent costars to resonate against. Deyn and Stoltz are especially good as two of Becky’s favored targets, and Virginia Madsen hovers memorably on the sidelines as her kindly mother, forever apologizing for having brought this monster into the world. The skill and cohesion of the entire ensemble dovetails movingly with the movie’s slow-building point, which is that art — and life — are best experienced in loving collaboration. That might sound like a soft conclusion after so much virtuosic sound and fury, but “Her Smell” earns its catharsis as well as its rancor. Late into the movie, the smoke suddenly clears, leaving Becky hushed and humbled at last, and building to a moment of reckoning — with a crucial assist from Bryan Adams — that feels both heartbreaking and astonishingly pure. It moves from there into a final chapter that is, in its way, no less jittery and harrowing than what came before, but this time with a precious sense of newfound hope in its pocket. We see Becky Something, with fresh clarity, for the good friend she once was, the loving mother she might become and the great artist she has always been. You can quibble with this movie’s title, but it gives redemption stories a good name. ------------ Advertisement ‘Her Smell’ Rating: R, for language throughout and some drug use Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes Playing: Starts April 19, ArcLight Cinemas, Hollywood justin.chang@latimes.com | Twitter: @JustinCChang<doc-sep>
What Elisabeth Moss accomplishes in “Her Smell” is something more than what’s called a “performance.” It’s an event. It’s a spectacle. It’s a joyous flaunting of power. This is an actress with a Ferrari in her garage, and most roles ask her only to drive the speed limit. In “Her Smell,” she gets to floor it. Until now, Moss has been a TV actress who has been good in a few movies. But from today on, she is Bette Davis on uppers, downers and steroids. This is a face that was made for movies, drooping like an apocalyptic cloud has fallen, then summoning a smile that turns on all the lights. And then you look again and see that behind the smile, she is still staring into some private abyss. Can I tell you something? Three times, while writing this, I typed the word “Wow,” and thought, “No, that’s not specific enough. That’s layman talk.” But you know what? Wow. No, seriously: Wow. Written and directed by Alex Ross Perry, “Her Smell,” which opens Friday, April 19, is the story of a rock star, Becky Something (Moss), told in a series of long vignettes — most ending in disaster. It’s about the fatal dance that each generation does with stardom, when talented people try to shape the raw material of themselves into legend. It’s filmed in the in-between places — backstage, green rooms, recording studios — the waiting rooms and birthing places of the performing arts. We first meet Becky backstage, and she is already a monster. Three years into stardom, the wheels have come off her personal life. She is doing drugs, barking orders, having tours cancelled on her, and she’s losing her recording contract. Weirdest and funniest of all — it’s a dramatic film, but there are lots of laughs — she is being followed by two shamans, who perform rituals designed to protect her from evil spirits. Meanwhile, the closest thing to an evil spirit in her life is herself. What we’re seeing is the awful showbiz spectacle of what happens when a person absolutely knows that he or she can do anything and get away with it, that nothing has consequences, that nothing is unforgivable. She is the singer-songwriter, so her bandmates need her. Without her, there’s no band. The record company owner (Eric Stoltz) is already overextended, and he needs to recoup his investment in her. And her ex-husband (Dan Stevens) is raising their child and needs her money. So as horrible, mercurial, irrational, childish, petulant, vicious and absurd as she is, she is the boss. And she knows it. And everyone around her knows it. There’s nothing she can’t do. Moreover, her public image only reinforces her bad behavior. As a film, “Her Smell” is entertaining and original, filmed with lots of long takes with a handheld camera that convey a restless energy. The soundtrack is subtle but bizarre: Underlying every scene is a quiet, eerie sound, like vinyl records being played backward. The movie’s one flaw, a notable one, is that the first hour is better than the second. The first is jaw-dropping. In the second half, the film slows down somewhat, but by then, the audience is hooked into the movie’s reality, so there’s no turning away. But Moss is endlessly fascinating, basking in the liberating comfort of surrendered glamour. She inhabits every cranny and crevice of the character’s despairing, terrified, burnt-out, blasted self. In your moviegoing life, you will rarely see a performer so energized, so strangely but unmistakably happy, playing someone so miserable. M“Her Smell”: Drama. Starring Elisabeth Moss, Amber Heard and Cara Delevingne. Directed by Alex Ross Perry. (R. 134 minutes.) Theaters and showtimes. Movie Details Find Showtimes Her Smell Drama R