Performed with a sharklike crafty and steadiness by Heather Burns, Nancy activates the down-home appeal, and McCrane, already wounded and looking for that means, is like smooth tissue in her oily fingers. However she quickly has a rival. On the funeral, McCrane runs into Essie, a cousin of indeterminate distance, and sparks fly. (We’re in Tennessee now, in any case.) Essie is an angelic foil to Nancy’s scheming; blonde and guileless, she is a kindergarten trainer resistant of Strings’s movie star somewhat than enthralled by it. In a young efficiency by Adelaide Clemens—who, it should be stated, bears an uncanny resemblance to Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea heroine, Michelle Williams—Essie is a relaxed port to Strings’s storm. They naturally have a drunken one-night stand.
To atone, McCrane swiftly proposes to Nancy, and it will seem she’d acquired her man—although not earlier than Nancy confronts Essie in a gripping scene of bless-your-heart dueling, that scrumptious specialty of the Southern lady brilliantly evoked by Lonergan right here.
Buzzing round McCrane’s many affairs, each private {and professional}, is his pathologically obliging and ever-present assistant, Jimmy. He’s the one who should ring the avant-garde German movie director with whom Strings is filming an area film to pause manufacturing (which he does in excellent German), whereas additionally maintaining a lid on his boss’s messy love life, and don’t overlook the dry cleansing! Jimmy sniffed out Nancy’s act from the beginning, and it’s enjoyable watching the loyal yes-man and the artful adventuress spar. It is usually by means of Jimmy that we observe the absurdity of life as a contemporary movie star (or the “third-biggest crossover star within the historical past of nation music,” extra particularly). With a toady at his disposal to do something that makes him even mildly uncomfortable, it’s no shock Strings feels out of contact.
