The strong casting and assured cinematography are ultimately let down by a story stuck on fast-forward, eschewing a traditional slow build, in favor of hitting its apex on the first night, and culminating halfway through the film. This is where writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine wants to wow us with a surprising second act, but if the screenplay is a bear, then this pitfall is its trap. One would think that by splintering the narrative you could combine two otherwise half-baked stories into a single meal, but it’s an illusion. Even if the disparate halves have intertwining ideas, they must either function as fully formed units or a cohesive dramatic whole; Black Bear accomplishes neither, hoping the genre-bending turn is jarring enough to impress.

But as I hinted earlier on, there is a saving grace to this misstep found in Levine’s fantastic lead actress. And so, the best way to create a cohesive whole and rescue the film from its pretensions is to zero-in on Aubrey Plaza’s chameleonlike singularity. While all three actors appear in both sections, Abbott and Gordon are less intriguing in their alternate roles, not necessarily a reflection of their talents, but rather that the script gives Plaza room to shine. From her icy playfulness in the first half to the ‘Gena Rowlands in Opening Night‘-style antics of the second; even when going big, Plaza shifts herself in more discrete ways than her counterparts.