"ALL ABOUT NINA" // TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW
There are films that seem to come along just at the right time in history to strike a chord. Those films have instant power, playing against the times that we are living in. ALL ABOUT NINA is one of those films, and it’s the best film in Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s career so far. Winstead plays Nina Geld, a stand-up comedian who’s also one of the most complex characters I’ve seen on screen in a while. Nina is alive on stage and has escaped to Los Angeles to leave behind an abusive ex-boyfriend (Chance Crawford) back in New York. However, the stand-up sets are so brutally honest, and her nerves get to her so much that she throws up after her sets.
The world of stand-up comedy is a brutal one, one that’s most definitely a boy’s club. To be a female comedian at all, you need a shield that’s rock solid. So, she adopts a much more confident persona while she’s on stage and when she’s off, she relaxes into who she really is. She shuts down the male comics with ease because she feels safe in her stand-up armor and can also go home with almost anyone she wants after. The question of, “Why should an armor be necessary at all as a female comic” is one that floats through the entire film, and watching Nina navigate her world and her comic world is often hilarious and brutally painful at the same time.
A romance blossoms within the film with a man named Rafe (Common), who’s charming, loving, and imperfect. More importantly, he wants Nina to be exactly who she is and nothing else. Wisely, the love story never threatens to become the only story in the film. The main storyline stays with Nina, and her own personal battle. Nina is allowed to be imperfect but a perfect model to walk behind in the film. She’s powerful, inconsistent, says one thing but does another, expects more out of a person but gives less than she could, longs for something bigger but settles for something small. In other words, she’s perfectly imperfect. She feels real. She feels human. And Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s performance anchors the film in such a commanding way that you feel as if you would follow Nina literally anywhere and trust that we’re all going to get through this, somehow. Not everyone will be unscathed, but are we ever?
