Naomi Watts and Sarah Paulson lead a large cast in Closing Night, a family drama that borrows heavily from other directors without developing its own identity. Cody Fern, who rose to fame as an actor before directing, is clearly aiming to remake John Cassavetes’ Opening Night — the 1977 Gena Rowlands vehicle about an actress facing a personal crisis — but the copy never fully takes hold. The film’s opening stretch tries to mimic the heightened emotional style of Pedro Almodóvar’s tales of troubled mothers and hidden family wounds, yet it loses its balance before it can settle into a steady rhythm.
Ryan Murphy’s campy style, which he shares with Watts as an actor, shows up in the film, but the camp never fully materializes. Paulson plays Sandra Vale, a celebrated star of stage and screen, with a death-stare severity that suits her psycho-nurse role in Murphy’s Ratched. The movie feels self-conscious from start to finish, and only begins working once it stops trying so hard.
Sandra’s Return to Broadway
Sandra is getting ready to come back to Broadway in Brecht’s Mother Courage, and that practice session gives away her secret. A seasoned performer, she struggles with her lines and her reason for being there, which is strange for someone with her experience. Even so, she sends formal invitations to her estranged family to come watch the play’s opening.
April, played by Watts, refuses to be treated like a “summoned” even though she has not spoken in thirty years. She rushes to Theo’s side, fearful that her son, played by Toby Wallace, will be kept from his aunt. Before she can stop him, Theo admits he has already reached out to the black-sheep diva. The angry posters of Aunt Sandra plastered across town hint that their meeting was almost inevitable.
Diane Joins the Fray
Diane, played by Dianne Wiest, owns a rundown hair salon in their remote hometown and has no interest in joining April on her trip. She is a heavy drinker who remains bitter over Sandra having slept with April’s boyfriend when she was 15. Yet after April begins sending reports from the road, the furious old woman changes her mind and gets on a plane.
The first big news comes from April’s snooping in the bathroom, where she finds a positive home pregnancy test belonging to Theo’s girlfriend, Lucy, played by Odessa A’zion. Lucy is wasted in a nothing role, and the stolen hairbrush that follows — the result of a klepto habit that adds little — only confirms it. Then Sandra starts slurring her lines before collapsing on stage, receiving a shattering diagnosis that helps thaw her relationship with April, though not with crotchety Diane.
The Secret Theo Keeps
The greatest secret belongs to Theo, and it is what drove Sandra to pull away from the family all those years ago. If you still cannot work out what that is, honestly, you need to open your eyes.
Fern’s Script Struggles
The script by Fern and fellow actor Devon Bostick turns somber in the final act, where Sandra decides to take a drastic step and asks April to join her. Those events are grim, though not without their affecting moments. The shift from the seriocomedy of the opening scenes to the sadness and self-recrimination of the closing portion is not handled with much grace by the filmmakers.
The difficulty in caring much for any of the people here comes from how few of them read as real. Only two stand out: Theo, whose feelings move between the women, and Diane, who makes her travel plans with amusing particularity, specifying that she wants a hotel room with a minibar.
The Talent Working Too Hard
Fern forces Paulson and Watts to work far too hard, pushing them beyond what they need to do even on Murphys Fair’s All’, the laughably bad legal soap where performance integrity appears to be beside the point. Sandra and April might almost have belonged in some thick Southern Gothic instead, one that leaned less on Diane for the humor that was clearly needed.
A wicked smirk or two does surface when April instantly takes Sandra’s misfortune as her own, thanks to Watts. Yet that moment of fun is rare in a film that mostly struggles to find its tone.
The Lineup That Should Be Juicier
This cast, which brings together Paulson, Watts, Wiest, Wallace and A’zion, should deliver a much more exciting film. Behind it stand producers Nancy Grant, Rosalie Chicoine Perreault, Will Howarth and Matilda Comers, alongside executive producers Tanya Lapointe, Louis Momméja, Patrick DesRosiers, Timothy White, Cody Fern, Devon Bostick, Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Dianne Wiest, Toby Wallace, Lucile Vainstein, Raphaël Quenard, Fred Gervais, Christopher Reig, Adrian Love and Kate Parkes. The director of photography is Yves Bélanger, the production designer Élise de Blois, the costume designer Guillaume LaFlamme, the music Mathieu David Gagnon, and the editor Dany Cooper. MK2 Films handles sales.
The production companies are Metafilms and Fictious.
The Verdict on Closing Night
The film borrows heavily from other directors without being able to deliver on its own terms. Paulson and Watts are excellent, but Fern forces them to work way too hard. Its ambitions are plain in its influences — Cassavetes, Almodóvar, Murphy — even if the execution never catches up.
The closing scenes manage to be moving in fits and starts, yet the shift from comedy to tragedy is handled without much skill. The film searches for its identity for too long and fails to settle on one, leaving a cast of major names working far harder than the material deserves.
Key Facts
– Cast: Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Dianne Wiest, Toby Wallace, Odessa A’zion
– Director: Cody Fern (with screenplay by Devon Bostick)
– Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes
– Producers: Nancy Grant, Rosalie Chicoine Perreault, Will Howarth, Matilda Comers
– Executive producers: Tanya Lapointe, Louis Momméja, Patrick DesRosiers, Timothy White, Cody Fern, Devon Bostick, Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Dianne Wiest, Toby Wallace, Lucile Vainstein, Raphaël Quenard, Fred Gervais, Christopher Reig, Adrian Love, Kate Parkes
– Sales: MK2 Films
This film fails to deliver on its promise. The cast is too strong, the idea behind it too promising, and the director’s vision too grand for a production that never manages to establish a consistent identity. Closing Night searches for a cohesive voice throughout, but it never secures one, instead remaining a shrill family drama without a clear direction.
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