Sundance. Downloading Nancy.

"Sundance Festival Director Geoff Gilmore introduced Downloading Nancy as 'the most intense film of the festival,'" notes Erik Davis at Cinematical. "Not only is he absolutely right, but it's also powerful, emotional, overwhelming and, most importantly, extremely uncomfortable. God bless whoever takes a chance on this film and attempts to market it, honestly, to a mass audience, because Downloading Nancy is a sick and twisted rollercoaster ride that climbs fast and drops slowly... leaving you plenty of time to absorb its raw insanity along the way."

Updated through 1/30.

"The film was shot by legendary cinematographer Christopher Doyle (Wong Kar-wai's frequent collaborator) in various shades of cadaver-dishwater gray and blue," notes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "[Maria] Bello's skin-peeling, ultra-depresso performance is wrenching and brave, calling for both emotional and physical nakedness. Can a film with those attributes also be insulting garbage? It's a difficult aesthetic-philosophical conundrum, but having sat through this damn thing I now have an answer."

"A forbidding and morbid piece of psycho-sadomasochism, Downloading Nancy is chilly enough to cause global cooling all by itself," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "Built around a swimming-in-the-deep-end performance by Maria Bello that is the definition of fearless, this first feature by big-deal Swedish commercials and music vid helmer Johan Renck feels like a walk-on-the-wild-side Euro entry rather than anything that would normally come out of the Amerindie movement. Commercial prospects, at least Stateside, are below zero."

"Downloading Nancy is one of those films that goes beyond in its pretentious efforts to top some of the worst Sundance bad habits," writes David Poland. "At first, I just thought it was going to be the Actress Over The Top Where's My Indie Spirit Award film. But that is actually insulting to those films, which generally fail in their goals, but at least make a game effort."

IndieWIRE interviews Renck.

Updates, 1/26: "This is not only the best film at Sundance this year, it provides insight into where you might be headed if you don't start fighting for yourself," declares Jesse Hawthorne Ficks at Pixel Vision.

"The energy of the film belongs entirely to Bello, who shows dimensions of sadness she's never revealed to audiences until now," writes Ryan Stewart at In the Company of Glenn.

Update, 1/30: "This is a grim film from beginning to end, but it's not without its merits," writes Rob Davis for Paste. "And yet I wish I understood how or why things came to this and knew more about the rope whose end Nancy has reached. I wish I'd been able to slip into the head of one of the characters, past the abraded skin and vibrating skull and into the hurting brain, but the psychobabble offered no entry, nor did the 'Inspired by True Events' title that appeared at the end, thumbing its nose at anyone who'd been thinking, 'Right. Give me a break.'"

Posted by dwhudson at January 24, 2008 8:55 AM