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Jackson, the subject of an excellent recent biography by Ruth Franklin, is much too interesting to succumb to the dull, sentimental moralizing of mainstream moviemaking. By contrast, this is an itchy sweater that’s unraveling as you watch it, thanks in large part to Moss’s wild-eyed turn as the tortured genius. Though this is a highly specific period piece, Shirley’s claustrophobia resonates loudly in 2020, especially because Decker renders it with inimitable panache. It’s supposed to be a temporary arrangement. The vignette in which Rose writhes in a patch of earthworm-infested mud, to cite one example, feels like some kind of forbidden erotic revolt — and a scene that would have been right at home in Decker’s earlier, earthy “Butter on the Latch.”. Reality-bending indie director Josephine Decker proves the perfect match for this playful psychological study of novelist Shirley Jackson, starring a wild-eyed Elisabeth Moss. There are richly satisfying performances from Moss and Stuhlbarg, though. And there is something naive in not showing how this great writer in reality had to do her work along with the childcare – childcare that husbands were of course not expected to do. The viewer, meanwhile, spins through a whirlwind of psychological horror and erotic implication. It’s a process comparable to the one director Josephine Decker explored in her previous film, Madeline’s Madeline. But that’s the mood the director Josephine Decker wants to conjure in Shirley—one where even a mundane home has a distinct air of spookiness. Stanley clearly wants to ruin young Fred’s career to assert his own alpha dominance, and Shirley wants to befriend Rose parasitically, using her as a psychological crash test dummy for the new novel she’s writing, speculating about the inner life of a young Bennington student who has recently disappeared. In the decades since, Shirley Jackson’s unnerving allegorical tale of ritualized small-town cruelty has spooked and intrigued countless readers, including many who first encountered it in a high school English class. But Decker and the film’s screenwriter, Sarah Gubbins (who adapted Susan Scarf Merrell’s novel), weave the reality of Shirley’s struggles with agoraphobia and anxiety into a fictional horror story of sorts. The relationship between Shirley and Rose is more complex—both parties are mesmerized by the positives and negatives they see in each other. But that creeping strangeness, that sense of Rose and Fred’s relationship slowly rotting inside the Jackson-Hyman abode, isn’t Decker’s only interest. The connection between Shirley's writing and her mental state permeate the movie and affect the characters in interesting ways. But Stanley and Shirley, that pair of emotional vampire squids, set out to suck the life out of the youngsters. The film begins with Rose and her husband, Fred (Logan Lerman), a Ph.D. student studying under Stanley, moving into Stanley and Shirley’s home to help around the house. Her mentee, the impressionable student Rose Nemser (Odessa Young), is fictional, but she serves as a stand-in for anyone who might be bewitched by Shirley’s writing, as well as for young women in the ’50s who were barred from many intellectual pursuits. The film begins with Rose and her husband, Fred (Logan Lerman), a Ph.D. student studying under … Shirley and her husband, Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg), are the only monsters lurking in their home, and that’s more than enough for an unsettling tale. He is the very opposite of the heroically open-minded professor Stuhlbarg played in Call Me By Your Name, the one who gives that amazing speech to his son, Timothée Chalamet, telling him not to forget or deny his own heartbreak. It also, incidentally, holds out the possibility that we might find out what happened to that missing woman. "Shirley" was clearly intended for the film-festival circuit, offering a narrowly pitched story where it's easy to admire the performances without feeling like the journey adds up to much. Shirley is blunt and abusive, while Stanley is creepily lecherous, pawing her at every opportunity. Rose's main job, however, turns out to be serving as a companion to Shirley, who -- coming off her success with short stories -- is embarking upon a novel, despite Stanley's concerns that in her fragile condition she's "just not up to it.".

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