LFF 2020: Biopic and psychological surreality interweave in Shirley

“It made me feel thrillingly horrible,” Rose (Odessa Young) says to Shirley (Elisabeth Moss) about her latest short story ‘The Lottery’ when they first meet. That line sums up Josephine Decker’s newest feature pretty succinctly. 

Biopic and psychological surreality interweave to tell the story of acclaimed horror writer Shirley Jackson and her college professor husband Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg) when Fred (Logan Lerman), Stanley’s new teaching assistant, and his wife Rose come to stay with them. Stanley asks the young couple to stay with them for longer than originally planned – Shirley and Stanley’s housekeeper just quit and he offers them free bed and board in exchange for looking after the house (“a clean house is a sign of mental inferiority,” Shirley quips). Fred is keen, and Rose reluctantly agrees. What follows is a fascinating study of how four people can get inside each other’s heads and the quiet havoc they can wreak while they’re there.

Stanley and Shirley have a strained, strange relationship. He undermines her work under the guise of care – for example, when Shirley tells him that she’s writing a novel, his response is “you’re not up to it.” The men in this film are not painted favourably; in one scene, when Stanley is speaking to Rose, attempting to flirt, you can hear him chewing and he has food in his facial hair. It is sensory, visceral, and we share in her disgust. Meanwhile, Elisabeth Moss shines as Shirley, delighting in the wickedness and meanness of the character and making it delicious to watch.

The film is punctuated with surreal images, like Shirley working at her desk in the dark of the garden, illuminated by moonlight. In typical Decker style, we’re never sure if these moments are fantasy or reality. The film is punctuated with stereotypical images, too, like the ghostly full moon, but they work – they feel like a homage rather than a cliche in Decker’s capable hands as Shirley’s ideas come to her in nightmarish visions.

Shirley is erratic in how she reacts to people, but she slowly bonds with Rose. “You seem quite smitten with her,” Stanley says of their relationship. “I don’t smote,” his wife retorts. When posed with a similar question, Rose responds: “She’s my friend.” “Women like Shirley don’t have friends,” Fred snaps. In one scene, Shirley and Rose are crouched on the ground in the woods. Shirley feeds Rose wild mushrooms – it feels intimate, erotic, dangerous. The women’s bond becomes increasingly intense as the film progresses – but is it Rose or Paula that Shirley is infatuated with?

The ending of the film is ambiguous, once again blurring the lines between fantasy and truth. Are we watching the characters’ reality or the plot of one of Shirley’s stories? The film is transfixing from start to finish, partly for this reason – it situates Shirley inside one of her own tales, throwing her into the middle of her own “thrillingly horrible” story. I loved every minute of it.