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

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Reviews

“A masterful piece of filmmaking. (Campos) 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. Invigorated by a top-drawer ensemble with Rebecca Hall discomfitingly electric in the best role she’s yet been offered. Campos has curbed his more avant-garde impulses for this project, realizing Craig Shilowich’s intelligent script with methodical restraint and observational patience — recognizing, perhaps, that the mere facts of Chubbuck’s tragedy are strange enough on their own, without need for stylistic complication. Campos’ perspective remains a distinctive one: D.p. Joe Anderson’s ruthlessly controlled camera still scrutinizes characters with clear-eyed concentration, while secondary corners of the frame often yield vital environmental and psychological detailing. Though the unblinking intensity of its gaze at Hall’s Chubbuck may be taken for coldness in some quarters, this is biopic filmmaking that feels a strong duty of care to its subject.” 
– Guy Lodge, Variety

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