Film Forum

Rebecca Hall “aces the role of her career” (Variety) in Antonio Campos’s CHRISTINE, the story of a woman who finds herself caught in the crosshairs of spiraling personal and career crises, based on true events in the life of TV newswoman Christine Chubbuck. Always the smartest person in the room at her Florida news station, Christine pitches social justice stories and frets that her talents are being wasted on fluffy local items, butting heads with her ratings-obsessed boss (Tracy Letts), who pushes for juicy, sordid content. Plagued by self-doubt and a dysfunctional home life, Christine sees promise in a burgeoning friendship with an on-air co-worker (Michael C. Hall), though her difficulty connecting with him is as disillusioning as her inability to stand out as a serious reporter at the station. A series of grievances takes CHRISTINE to a dark and surprising conclusion.

USA • 2016 • 119 MINS. • THE ORCHARD

Reviews

“A masterful piece of filmmaking. In Campos’ first two features, 2008’s AFTERSCHOOL and 2012’s SIMON KILLER, he helped establish the visual immediacy and sonic texture that’s become a hallmark of the Borderline Films collective that he shares with Sean Durkin (MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE) and Josh Mond (JAMES WHITE). With CHRISTINE, Campos applies that style to a movie that — grim subject matter aside — is actually fairly mainstream. He shoots Shilowich’s script cleanly and clearly, balancing biographical/ethnographic detail with the kind of intense focus on one character’s psychology that has been his trademark. (It’s) vivid, intense, and artful.”
– Noel Murray, Indiewire

“A thrumming, heartsore, sometimes viciously funny character study, sensitive both to the singularities of Chubbuck’s psychological collapse and the indignities weathered by any woman in a 1970s newsroom. The movie is a delicately balanced and apportioned ensemble piece. Michael C. Hall is typically excellent. Likeliest to be remembered as the film that finally made good on Rebecca Hall’s flinty, often under-challenged gifts. By turns shrilly frightening and blearily sucker-punched, her performance bears improbable comparison with Natalie Portman’s Oscar-winning BLACK SWAN turn as a study of self-disarrangement from the inside out. Invigorated by a top-drawer ensemble with Rebecca Hall discomfitingly electric in the best role she’s yet been offered.”
– Guy Lodge, Variety

“In Hall, (the filmmaker) has the perfect actor to convey Chubbuck’s internal struggle in a manner that’s devastating.” 
– Nigel M. Smith, The Guardian (UK)