Greener Grass: Review

I've been putting off writing this review for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I was desperate to re-watch this film and experience it all over again and secondly because I really wasn't sure how I was going to write about it. Greener Grass is a film which is just impossible to describe and even if I did tell you everything that happens in it you'd probably still be none the wiser!

There's only one quote from a review from Indiewire which I think accurately sums the film up.

"Like Wes Anderson taking on a Black Mirror Instalment or David Lynch suddenly directing an episode of Desperate Housewives."

That's the kind of crazy, weird, hilarious brilliance we're talking about here and I absolutely loved it! I have not laughed this much at a film in a long time and even better I wasn't just laughing at certain points, I was laughing the whole way through. Greener Grass throws so many weird, funny moments at you, you don't know what to laugh at first.

1. Plot... kind of...

Greener Grass follows two soccer moms Jill and Lisa who live in a world where people drive around in golf carts instead of cars, everyone has braces and every family is colour coded. This isn't an alternate universe or anything this is just how life is. You will never get an explanation, it's just the setting.

At the beginning of the film while Jill watches her first child Julian fail on the football field and hearing about Lisa's jealousy of her perfect life, she gives her baby Madison to Lisa... as a gift... and the exchange is like she's giving her one of her shirts...

Lisa's jealousy also extends to Jill's husband Nick who she mistakenly snoggs when the two women get their husbands "mixed up". Nick has an addiction to drinking swimming pool water...

Jill and Nick are worried about their youngest child who's very bright but useless in other areas. Their pressure on him makes him so depressed he throws himself into the swimming pool and turns into a dog, which everyone but Jill seems pretty happy about anyway...

Meanwhile something sinister seems to be stalking Jill as her once perfect life starts to crumble around her...

Ya know what, there really isn't much point in me explaining any more because that's the general gist but there's so much craziness going on in this film I'd have to break it down scene by scene to tell you what really happens!

Absurdist comedies like this don't always appeal to me but in the case of Greener Grass I found this crazy deconstruction of suburban life to be a breath of fresh air. The comedy absolutely landed for me. Sometimes I need a bit of un-filtered silliness in my life and this film provided me with a lifetime of it. I've been thinking about certain shots and moments in this film for weeks now.

2. Making the Silly Work

The script was written and directed by the films two leading women Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe which is one of the reasons I decided to check the film out in the first place. Women filmmakers rarely get to be this silly or this kind of funny because these kind of films are such an acquired taste and can be a big risk for the studio and also the filmmaker. I imagine most female comedy writers opt for something safer in the hope of progressing their careers instead of taking the leap.

Part of the reason why the film works so well is in the visual comedy it provides. Greener Grass was filmed by cinematographer Lowell A. Meyer who also did Thunder Road. His shots not only enhance the comedy of the situation but also help to bring forward the meaning behind them in a stunning visual fashion. Anyone else might have decided to film this like an SNL skit. Meyer makes it filmic and I swear I've been seeing some of his shots in my dreams lately.

Conclusion

This kind of weirdness will not be to everyone's taste. If you're not someone who enjoys completely unexplained silliness then you're probably going to find this film pretty painful but personally I thought it was hilarious.

The cinematography is incredible so I'd recommend watching it just from a technical perspective and the delivery of the actors all hit the mark. It's such a strange film but it works so well as a piece, with tonnes of hidden jokes and details which call for a second viewing. It's the very definition of a cult film.

8/10